A CONSENSUS must exist among those best placed to form an opinion that the umpires — especially Darrell Hair — lost the plot at the Brit Oval on Sunday. This must be so, otherwise Pakistan would already have received a widely damaging ban from the international game, one that would cover the period of the World Cup in the Caribbean early next year, resulting only in unhelpful repercussions beyond the world of cricket.

It is difficult these days, under television’s microscopic eye, for anyone, other than the serial sledger, unfortunately, to get away with anything dodgy on the field of play. Once upon a time a ball could be — and sometimes was — etched with a bottle top or enhanced with some well-concealed lubricant without being caught on camera, but not any more. Sunday’s ball, as it was seen in close-up, looks to have been subjected to no more than the normal wear and tear of a hard-fought match.

I remember asking Ken Barrington about picking the seam; not the effect it had, which can be devastating, but how much of it went on. He was amazed when I was surprised to be told that one of the finest, most respected, popular, natural fast bowlers of the time — indeed, of all time — grew one thumbnail longer than the other solely for the purpose.

A contemporary of Ken, a poacher who turned gamekeeper (or umpire), accused a colleague of mine of naivety for having written at Taunton one day how unaccountable it was that the ball was suddenly seen to be darting all over the place. “You should have known that I started to pick this seam,” he said.

The man at the centre of the present storm, Hair, falls into the category of those Australians for whom touring English cricketers used to have so little time — a Test umpire short of playing experience. They passed one or two, such as Col Egar and Lou Rowan, but failed the majority, especially if England were losing.

I have never thought an awful lot of Hair, but nor have I of Steve Bucknor, the omnipresent West Indian. By the end of his career, even the incomparable Frank Chester, who had been a glittering young batsman for Worcestershire before losing an arm in the Great War and becoming a legend among umpires, was making all sorts of mistakes.

Today, the job of a Test umpire is harder than ever. No other can be more certain of challenging self-esteem, with every wrong decision being highlighted from pole to pole and morning to night. Fallibility is as natural as it is inevitable.

All one can reasonably ask is for impartiality, probity and, where possible, charity, preferably, for a lack of ostentation. Even if he was reasonably certain on Sunday that the Pakistanis were up to no good, Hair should have warned them first of his suspicions. It does not seem right that he did not. It is much more what the authoritarian Chester might have done when hubris was undermining his reputation.

It is such a pity, not least because Sunday’s cricket in the fourth Test at the Oval had been so full of cut and thrust. What had made it extra special for me, watching on television, was Inzaman-ul-Haq opting to open his bowling with Danish Kaneria, the irrepressible leg spinner.

Kaneria may not yet have quite the wiles and mysteries of Abdul Qadir, but he is the best fun to watch. England have never had one much better.

Watching great fast bowling can be dramatic; watching top-class spin is a much rarer treat, and the sooner we see Kaneria again the better.