cricket.rickeyre.com

In case you are wondering about the lack of activity on this page, it is because I integrated my cricket blog with my other writings from the commencement of October 2006.

The place you need to be is: www.rickeyre.com/blog/cricket

The new address for my cricket blog RSS feed is:

http://www.rickeyre.com/blog/cricketrss

Please note that the atom feed is no longer available.

A special cheerio to those of you who are visiting this website via Patrick Kidd’s cricket blog at The Times, “Line and Length“. Patrick picked up on my item on Anthony Albanese’s cricketing analogy to fighting global warming. (And no, I don’t go trawling Hansard every night for quotes, I happened to see Albo on the tele giving the speech in question.)

But on to the real purpose of this post. I am centralising my personal blogging into one location now, which I have given the cryptic URL of www.rickeyre.com/blog . The reason for this is that much of my writing on cricket these days crosses over into other subjects (as, for example, with my post on Albanese’s climate change speech). My other blog, now.rickeyre.com, is also being superseded in this change.

Fear not, however, as cricket items will continue to appear here, cross-posted from the central blog.

Never mind the Inzamam story in the screengrab (below) from the BBC Online cricket homepage this morning (and I’ll have more to say about that once I’ve read the full judgment). I want you to take a look at the first item in the line that begins “Key Information”:

Unfortunately, John Howard was not in the House when Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage and Water, Anthony Albanese, gave the following solution for reducing greenhouse emissions, speaking in Federal Parliament on Wednesday:

Climate change is real and the threat of dangerous climate change is also real. What Labor would do is cut Australia’s greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050. We know that, if you have a target, it is like a one-day cricket target: you do not bat out the first 30 overs; you send out Adam Gilchrist to get some runs on the board early because it makes it easy to get to the target later on. That is what the business council’s Global Roundtable on Climate Change has said.

Allen Stanford’s multi-million dollar 20/20 extravaganza has become the latest entrant to the Pantheon of Cricket Vaporware - those would-be cash cows that disappear after, if they’re lucky, one outing, or if they’re unlucky - none.

The Stanford 20/20 Super Star match, set down between West Indies and South Africa for November 10 with a winner take-all purse of €3.9 million, has been cancelled. The reason will shock you, so sit down.

It clashes with an official ICC fixture. The West Indies start a Test match at Lahore less than 24 hours after the scheduled date of Allen Stanford’s brainchild.

I’ll defer to Caribbeancricket.com for analysis of the reasons and impact of the cancellation. Five million smackers for a twenty over-a-side slugfest sounds ridiculously obscene, and hopefully the lad from Texas will do something more constructive and less flashy next time… and I reckon there will be a next time.
Oh, the mention of vaporware reminds me to check out www.i2020cc.com for any updates…

Law no.1 of Email Etiquette: Never, ever put anything in an email that you wouldn’t want the whole world to see. Didn’t you know that, Darrell?

Darrell Hair’s botched attempt to negotiate an early retirement package for himself was clumsy and ill-advised. But why has it become everybody’s business?

According to former corporate lawyer Mal Speed, the ICC received three legal opinions saying that it was “required to disclose the correspondence as it was material or relevant to matters that might be raised in the Code of Conduct hearing of Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq.”

But how?

Do the emails provide evidence relating to the charge that member(s) of the Pakistan team tampered with the ball during the Oval Test last Sunday? I don’t think so.

Do the emails provide evidence relating to the charge that Inzamam ul-Haq breached the Players’ Code of Conduct on Sunday by bringing the game into disrepute? I don’t think so.

Do the emails provide any evidence that Hair was attempting to commit an act of extortion or fraud? Speed said yesterday that ICC was “certain they are not the product of dishonest, underhand or malicious intent and believe the contents played no part in Darrell’s decision-making during the fourth Test.”

So what was the reason for making this situation public? If this is meant to be an example of the ICC bending over backwards to display its transparency, then it still needs to convince me of the real reason that they’ve put this into the public domain.

Or was it part of a deal to ensure that Pakistan didn’t pull out of their ODI series with England? A withdrawal which would, in theory, leave the PCB liable for a multi-million dollar fine. Is anybody extorting anybody else in the back room?

And where does the other half of the umpiring team in the Fourth Test, Billy Doctrove, fit into this picture? And, indeed, the match referee Mike Procter?

If there is anything that does still require investigation, it is the circumstances that led to the termination of the Test match a day and a session early. In any major international sporting event, officials should be moving heaven and earth to avoid the premature conclusion of the contest.

But who’s to blame here? The ICC should hold at the very least an internal inquiry into the circumstances of the forfeiture of the Test, regardless of whether or not Inzi is found guilty of the alleged Code of Conduct breach.

If they have already decided to hold one, why haven’t we been told about it? Doesn’t it
deserve the same level of transparency as applied to Darrell Hair’s confidential emails? If they haven’t decided to hold one, that paints an even worse picture of the ICC’s transparency.

Darrell Hair has made some stunningly ill-considered decisions away from the playing field in the past, notably in the publication of a book of memoirs in 1998 - which could quite justifiably have ended his umpiring career there and then. But it’s hard to imagine that his future as an elite umpire is tenable after this disclosure of events.

I find it hard to reach any other conclusion than to say that Hair is being hung out to dry.

Mao Tse-Tung had “The Great Leap Forward”. Darrell Hair had “The Way Forward”. Coincidence?

Read Hair’s email to the ICC entitled “The Way Forward”, and the follow-up emails, at The Times.

If it’s in The Bladder it must be true!

This press release from the ICC regarding Sunday’s Contretemps at Kennington arrived in my inbox in the last half-hour. It might be the final word on the Test, but I think there’s still some blood-letting to come. I wonder if the ECB’s insurance covers this type of cancellation: