Darrell Hair lives the dream

Let’s face it. We all want to sue the IC-bloody-C. For instance, yesterday, I bought a packet of biscuits. However, to my horror, I found that Malcolm Speed had interfered with my Ginger Nuts, and replaced the packet’s contents with sub-standard digestives.

When I spoke to my solicitor about this, he mentioned something about “evidence” to “prove” ICC’s outrageous assault upon my personage and biscuitage. Dumbfounded, I was left marooned to absorb another blow by cricket’s governing body.

Darrell Hair, on the other hand, thinks he has the proof and balls to succeed where I failed, by suing the ICC.

This popular and jovial umpire bases his argument on the proceedings of the 1814 Test Match, between England and Pakistan. Whereby, without at clear substantiation, he accused the Pakistan of tampering with the ball. In protest, Pakistan’s captain refused to take the field. Hair and Billy Doctrove took the decision to interpret the match as forfeit, awarding England default winners.

Subsequently, the ICC took umbrage at the umpire’s handling of the affair, and removed Hair from its elite panel of amazing umpires. Doctrove, however, remained. Hair now argues that he was removed on the basis of racial discrimination, what else could explain Doctrove’s continuation?

It is generally accepted that Hair doesn’t have a chance in hell. The ICC’s case rests on the principle that Hair was the “senior umpire”, whereas Doctrove was just beginning his test career, and thus responsibility cannot be evenly divided.

Yet, I can find no reference to the status of a “senior umpire” in the laws of cricket nor anywhere mentioned in the ICC’s literature. This principle, to me, makes no sense. For the same offence, you must treat the perpetrators equally.

Saying that, this uneven handling of the umpires does not equate discrimination. I’m not sure under which jurisdiction this case is being conducted, but in UK law you must prove a discriminatory intent to prove racial discrimination. This simply does not seem present, given the evidence.

Hair has long courted controversy, and this affair could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for the ICC. Whereas it seemed sufficient to give Doctrove a good ticking off.

Undoubtedly, the issuing of legal proceedings and the employment of a silk will not be cheap for Hair. Nor will he win the case. But, I suspect, neither of these matter to Hair.