However, they were not prepared for the bombshell dropped by Malcolm Speed, the chief executive of the ICC.
Darrell Hair, the Australian umpire who changed the ball on the fourth day of the fourth Test at the Brit Oval, had offered to resign quietly if the ICC paid him off with $500,000 (£268,000).
Not only that, Mr Speed told the dumbfounded cricket writers, but also before long Hair was sending another missive to his line manager saying that since there were no suggestions that he might have been racially motivated he wanted to renegotiate the financial terms.
The implication was that the price for going quietly needed to be raised.
Mr Speed admitted that his first reaction on seeing the letter was one of shock. He referred it to David Pannick, QC, and two other senior lawyers. Mr Pannick will represent the ICC if it proceeds with the charges against Inzamam-ul-Haq, the Pakistan captain, of ball tampering and bringing cricket into disrepute.
All three advised that the letter should be disclosed to the press and to the Pakistan Cricket Board. To the press because they would otherwise be accused of a cover-up, and to the PCB because if the letter’s contents came out during the hearing to try Inzamam it could scupper the case against him.
Hair’s offer will be discussed at an emergency meeting of the world governing body’s executive committee in Dubai a week today. Only then will it be decided whether it is necessary to proceed with an ICC hearing to try Pakistan’s captain.
Last night Mr Speed said that a hearing was still being planned for the second half of September. That guaranteed that Pakistan would fulfil their contract to play Monday’s Twenty20 international at Bristol and the five 50-over one-day internationals that follow, between August 30 and September 10, at Cardiff, Lord’s, Southampton, Trent Bridge, Nottingham and Edgbaston.
Yesterday’s disclosure of the exchange of e-mails between Hair and ICC officials can only enhance the chance that if the hearing takes place the Pakistan captain will be exonerated.
Inzamam was punished four times by the ICC last year after adverse reports by umpires.
As things stand he still faces charges of being responsible, as captain, for alleged illegal tampering with the ball to get it to “reverse” swing. His side was punished for that by the award of five penalty runs to England and the changing of the ball to one chosen by their opponents. The second charge of bringing the game into disrepute came after from his failure to lead his side on to the field behind the umpires after an extended tea interval. By the time that he declared himself prepared to take the field, Hair had awarded the game to England on the ground that they were prepared to continue with the match when Pakistan were not.
Hair’s financial offer on Tuesday was almost certainly made with honest intentions.
The first line of his letter to Doug Cowie, the referees’ manager, suggests that the men had already discussed the idea of remuneration for a resignation, although Mr Speed quickly and sensibly scotched the proposal as soon as he got wind of it.
At 53, a veteran of 76 Tests, Hair was known to be beginning to tire of the remorseless treadmill of the international cricket circuit. He was contracted until March 2008 but, having in effect stopped a Test match single-handedly, by making the essentially correct but unprecedented ruling that Pakistan had forfeited the game, he no doubt saw resignation as a cunning plan that would have three beneficial consequences: a way out of a crisis for his employers; early retirement for himself; and a handsome lump sum to tide him over while perhaps continuing to officiate in county cricket in England.
In the 14 years since his international debut, Hair has been seen as one of the best and bravest adjudicators of matters such as lbw appeals or the veracity of catches claimed close to the wicket, but as something of a traffic warden as far as players are concerned, not inclined to discuss even the possibility of withdrawing the ticket once he has started to write it out. That is what happened at the Oval last Sunday, when he became suspicious that the ball was swinging unusually and, on inspecting it, formed the firm opinion that marks on one side were the result of deliberate scratching or lifting by the finger or thumbnail of one of the Pakistan players.
Instead of warning Inzamam that any repetition would be penalised, he applied the sanction of five penalty runs to England immediately, after a brief consultation with Billy Doctrove, his less experienced West Indian co-umpire. There was no obligation to warn Pakistan’s captain — and even if he had done so, there was no guarantee that he would have avoided the subsequent brouhaha. Until this week his most controversial decision was his no-balling of Sri Lanka’s uniquely unorthodox off-spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan, for bowling with an illegal action on the first day of the second Test between Australia and Sri Lanka at Melbourne in 1995.
Although all three ICC officials at yesterday’s press conference said that they did not believe there was anything malicious in Hair’s attempt to solve the crisis, they did say that it was the sign of a man under extreme pressure.
His own statement said that he wanted to continue as an umpire. No doubt he will, but he is unlikely to take charge of a game involving Pakistan, which makes it the more ironic that his demand for a payoff should so have prejudiced the ICC case and enhanced Pakistan’s.
