Nothing stimulates the romantic side of sport quite like an improbable comeback. Connoisseurs of the genre will instantly nominate Lance Armstrong after cancer, Lester Piggott after prison and Niki Lauda after a Ferrari in flames. To these dramatic tales must now be added the return to Test cricket of Darrell Hair after purgatory.

In some respects, this is a misnomer. Umpires are not supposed to be the stuff of sporting legend. The best, it is often said, operate invisibly, their demeanour and decisions attracting no attention. But such anonymity had never been natural to Hair, even before he activated a racial and legal storm.

Hair was always strong, usually right but so unafraid of controversy that he seemed to court it flirtatiously, most notably in his calling of Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing in 1995. But even that faded into insignificance when he enraged the Pakistanis, who already distrusted him, with a sanction for ball-tampering.

Since he removed the bails at the Brit Oval in August 2006, declaring the first forfeiture of a Test in cricket history, Hair’s life has not been the same. He has been the subject of hate campaigns, has sued his employers and his umpiring duties have been confined to the cricketing equivalents of Siberia. Until yesterday.

Opinion remains polarised on whether Hair is hero or villain, a good man wronged or an officious bigot who got what was coming to him. None, though, can dispute the momentous nature of his return. When, at 10.55am, he descended the pavilion steps at Old Trafford, a scrum of photographers trained their lenses and began snapping. Once he was past, they scattered, job done. Not one remained to capture the entrance of the players.

Hair had sunblock on his lips, needless on a dank day in Manchester but maybe indicative of the nerves he had openly anticipated. “We all feel pressure,” he had said. “I think the decision-making ability is still there, the only thing that could change that is a lack of confidence.”

The notion of Hair lacking confidence once seemed fanciful, but not any more. As he plodded to the middle, England’s Test-match trumpeter in the crowd gave his usual rendition of Jerusalem . . . “And did those feet, in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green.” Just to remind Darrell how long he had been away.

Much has changed in the 21 months between his 76th and 77th Test matches. Not least the instant view that he was finished as an umpire, his position rendered untenable not so much by his hardline application of the laws but by the subsequent revelation that he had offered his resignation in return for $500,000. However mischievous that leak from the ICC might have been, and however misconstrued Hair’s conduct, he seemed fatally tainted. Two months later, he was given the equivalent of gardening leave and responded with proceedings for racial discrimination that he was later to drop.

Time has healed miraculously, at least in some quarters. It is fair to say that Hair would still not be a welcome official in Karachi, nor is he ever likely to be. England and New Zealand, though, were two of the three countries to vote against his suspension and Simon Taufel, who stood with him yesterday, spoke out in support.

His comeback, then, was as cosy as the circumstances could permit, especially given the venue of a city still glowing with goodwill from a quite different sporting triumph.

Still, for a man labelled by Imran Khan as “an umpiring fundamentalist”, there were the same anxieties any player would feel after so long out of the scene. He needed to play himself in again, to find the umpiring equivalent of the middle of the bat.

He got his chance in the fifth over. Ryan Sidebottom’s inswinger, the one that earns him so many leg-befores. Jamie How trapped in front. The entire England slip cordon howling their appeals.

It would have been easy to give, to get in the game in a pseudo-positive way. Hair, though, twitched only to transfer a pebble into his coat pocket, then shook his massive head briefly. Too high, he judged. And replays proved him spot-on.

We were into the afternoon session before he was asked to adjudicate again. How edged Anderson’s outswinger and Hair’s finger was raised instantaneously, almost exuberantly, a gesture he must have believed he would never make again at this level.

It came easily, after that. Hair relaxed enough to venture a surreptitious wave to someone in the pavilion. He changed the ball, a routine out-of-shape one rather than the suspicions of old. And when bad light delays brought a burst of slow hand-clapping, he looked impassively in control. Just like old times. “I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand . . .”