Malcolm Speed must be offering up a silent prayer of thanks that next year he is getting out of the surreal world of cricket administration after the mauling the International Cricket Council (ICC) has taken at the London Employment Tribunal.

Whether Darrell Hair, the Australian umpire, will be successful in his racial discrimination case against the ICC in which he is claiming lost earnings of US$3.5m (£1.75m) is not clear, but it is already plain that the body of which Speed is chief executive has been severely embarrassed by this bloody encounter.

It is not over yet. Speed has still to be cross-examined. Although he was a lawyer before entering sports administration, others in his camp have failed to survive an inquisition by Robert Griffiths QC, acting for Hair.

Speed has sat through all five days of proceedings at Victory House in Holborn, London, with a face as stony and cheerless as Tribunal Room 4 itself. The modern whitewashed room – housing a three-man tribunal at one end, the two parties and their legal teams in the middle and a gaggle of reporters at the other end – has just one small set of windows looking on to a brick wall. Its severe air-conditioning is more suited to an Australian summer than an English autumn. Room 4 has all the charm of Room 101.

Cricket administrators should know by now that they enter courtrooms or public inquiries like this at their peril. The world governing body must remember what happened when it took on Kerry Packer in 1977. It left the High Court in London without its shirt. The England and Wales Cricket Board was required to pay substantial compensation to Theresa Harrild in 1998 after it breached the sex discrimination act by dismissing her.

Rather like a Test match, the tribunal took time to gain momentum. But by the fourth day the ICC team, led by Michael Beloff QC, had gained the upper hand. It then became known that Billy Doctrove, the umpire who was officiating alongside Hair when last year’s Test at The Oval was abandoned after Pakistan had been penalised for ball tampering, had failed to board a plane in the Caribbean bound for London.

Hair’s team had called Doctrove as a witness in a case based on the ICC’s differing treatment of both umpires, members of the elite umpiring panel. While Hair has not stood in matches involving full-member countries since the Oval Test, Doctrove, a West Indian, has continued duties as before. However, it transpired that before citing personal reasons for his nonappearance, Doctrove had phoned the ICC and suspicion grew that he had opted to safeguard his future employment on the elite panel. The suggestion that the ICC had “leant” on Doctrove was denied by Beloff.

Then came Friday’s fifth day, which proved as compelling as any last day of a Test. Griffiths had missed the previous day through illness, but rose from his sickbed to tear holes in the ICC position. It was the ICC’s bad hair day.

The ICC intended to produce all executive board members to show the unanimity of the view that they had lost confidence in Hair on cricketing grounds, but Griffiths effortlessly highlighted the inconsistencies in the positions of Sir John Anderson of New Zealand, Inderjit Singh Bindra of India and South Africa’s Ray Mali, who is now the ICC president.

By his own admission, Anderson, chairman of the audit committee, was the architect of the plan to marginalise Hair. But Griffiths had him admit that the Pakistani board had agreed to withdraw its call for an inquiry into Hair’s conduct in return for Anderson’s proposal that he be removed from the elite umpires panel. Griffiths painted a picture of an ICC executive board operating more like a gentlemen’s club than a modern, well-run business. Proper minutes were not kept of the meeting at which the board ignored the recommendation of Speed, the one trained administrator, that no action should be taken against Hair, in favour of keeping him on the elite panel but giving him little to do.

Griffiths exposed how little regard the board had for the rights of Hair, never charging him with wrongdoing or giving him the opportunity to defend himself. They were more concerned with keeping happy cricket’s commercial partners in the shape of sponsors and TV companies. There are parallels here with the match-fixing crisis, fuelled by underpaid, overworked players driven into the arms of corrupt bookmakers.

What no ICC witness could explain was why Hair had to be kept away from big matches. The most extraordinary moment came when Mali said he saw no reason why Hair should not resume umpiring big matches tomorrow, an opinion directly contrary to his organisation’s argument that it had lost confidence in the umpire.

Griffiths also pointed out that the officials who presided over the fiasco of the World Cup final in Barbados this year, when they misinterpreted regulations and ordered the game to conclude in near darkness, had been allowed to retain their positions on the elite panel.

There is little chance of Hair returning to Test duty. His testimony burnt too many bridges. But he showed his big-match temperament by handling two days as a witness with far greater coolness than those who followed. He also made time to, as Beloff put it, sling mud along the way. Hair portrayed Speed as a man dragged hither and thither by political undercurrents, describing at one point how Speed conceded that the ICC was intent on getting rid of both of them. He also threw in hurtful anecdotes about Pakistan. Shaun Pollock, of South Africa, was fined his match fee after a one-day international against Pakistan for asking Hair to “keep an eye on Shoaib Malik scratching the ball”.

Hair also recounted how, after Pakistan were knocked out of the 2007 World Cup, umpire Rudi Koertzen – still a member of the elite panel – had said to him: “That’s great news. Those cheats can now go home.”

Hair’s case is scheduled to conclude on Friday, but a verdict may not come until the end of the month. Whatever the outcome, the case has highlighted serious issues for the wider game of cricket.

First, the ICC needs to be run by a smaller executive with powers to act decisively and swiftly without recourse to an unwieldy and politically hamstrung executive board. And officials need training in sports administration.

Second, the ICC must offer greater assistance to the most put-upon body of men in its care, the umpires.

And third, the principle that the umpire’s word is final has been challenged. Since August last year this timeless understanding has been in jeopardy.

Which umpires will dare make difficult judgment calls on sensitive issues? Who will dare accuse another team of ball-tampering? If the ICC wants better umpires, it ought to treat them better.

The Darrell Hair case: the major disclosures

1 Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief, reneged on an agreement to personally propose to the ICC executive board that no action be taken against umpire Darrell Hair. He later explained to Hair: ‘My relationship with the board was so bad – and India would have voted against my proposal.’ Speed also admitted to Hair: ‘The ICC board wants to sack both of us’

2 Speed asked Hair to lay a charge against Inzamam-ul-Haq, the Pakistan captain, of bringing the game into disrepute. The ICC chief said that it would ‘look better’ if Hair, rather than Speed, did this

3 Shaun Pollock, of South Africa, inset, was fined his match fee after a one-dayer against Pakistan for asking Hair to ‘keep an eye on Shoaib Malik scratching the ball’. Officially, Pollock’s punishment was described as ‘dissent when an appeal was turned down’. Malik is now Pakistan captain

4 The ICC failed to keep full minutes, or tape recordings, of a subcommittee meeting to determine Hair’s fate. Further discussions about his future by the executive board were not properly recorded. Sir John Anderson, from New Zealand, said that if the board put its views on Hair into ‘hard copy’ it could ‘end up in court’

5 When Pakistan were knocked out of the World Cup in March 2007, South African umpire Rudi Koertzen, who was still on the ICC’s elite panel, told Hair: ‘That’s great news. Those cheats can now go home’

6The entire panel of elite umpires co-wrote a letter to the ICC on November 6, 2006, expressing disquiet at the way Hair had been treated by the ICC

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