Smash hit

Within the controversy, we were arguing about lots of issues that got muddled together in one unhelpfully large and intractable mess. So let us unpick and separate the threads.

Should umpires consider the “bigger picture” before making decisions? (I would be disappointed, by the way, if an umpire gave me out when I wasn't because he saw the big picture.) Can a team fail to take the field and expect not to forfeit the match? (No - Sunil Gavaskar, the former India captain, tried it in 1981 and it did not work for him either.) Were Pakistan tampering with the ball? (I have no idea, but I thought it was quite late in the day when we got around to asking that chestnut.) Should ball-tampering be legalised? (Possibly, although I am not bothered either way.) Can you successfully bowl reverse swing without ball-tampering? (Sorry, I am just a batsman...)

As with the laws of cricket, so it is with the laws of the land. Are you a criminal? Of course not. Do you sometimes drive at 85mph on an empty motorway? Yes, but surely that is not the point. How about drink-driving? That is different, isn't it? That is a criminal offence.

We do not see speeding and drink-driving as differing shades of wrong-doings but belonging to different categories. On what facts are these distinctions made? Are you sure that driving while slightly above the alcohol limit but at legal speed is more dangerous than driving too fast but sober? Do you know the statistics for road accidents and what causes them? Probably not. But you do know that drink-driving is seen as an irresponsibility bordering on evil. Being caught drink-driving is a cause of deep shame. Being caught driving fast, on the other hand, is perceived as merely unlucky.

Hair thought that he was dishing out a speeding ticket. Pakistan felt that they were in the dock for drink-driving. It was an argument about our attitudes towards the crime as much as whether the offence had happened in the first place.

Conventions change all the time. Drink-driving has not always existed in a special category of motoring offence. Speeding may go the same way. By the same logic, if a World Cup is one day decided by a ball that was clearly thrown, we may tire of bowlers who gain an illegal advantage with a bent arm. Conversely, if the ball-tampering rule is enforced often enough, it may become an everyday offence, just like a warning for too much appealing, or on-field ill-discipline.

As some crimes are upgraded in our imagination, others are downgraded. Analysing these fluidities and inconsistencies helps us not only to understand how often moral outrage is misplaced. It may also, with luck, help us to iron out some of the inevitable flaws in our personal codes of conduct.

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