the doosra: the Hair finale

So Inzamam gets away with a 4 one-day ban, the minimum, as expected. And as expected, Hair wouldn't umpire the Champions trophy. And as expected, ICC comes down with another decision under pressure from the Asian countries.

One thing I fail to understand is why everyone's going after Hair for abandoning the test while it was a decision made jointly by both the umpires. And frankly, I'm not sure what umpires can do other than award the match to opposition if a team fails to show up on time.

And if Pakistan felt so slurred about ball tampering then they should have walked out right away instead of waiting for tea-time and listen to the management, which as everyone knows, has practically done nothing but played politics ever since the inception of Pak cricket.

Over the years appeals have been increasing against the umpires' decisions and there's nothing wrong to appeal but it's about time that ICC brought some outside judges, the ones that rule in real courts to rule on cricketing issues rather then placing stooges, controlled more by money and marketing than anything else. You don't need to understand cricket markets and strategies for selling cricket or how much clout each of the cricketing nations wield in giving out a ruling based on a set of rules.