Sidekick, Darrell Hair

With great satisfaction I would like to report that the Darrell Hair saga continues. It seems that ICC desperately has the urge to employ Darrell Hair on its umpiring panel. It was announced today that Mr. Hair will officiate the triangular one-day series in involving Kenya, Scotland and Canada. You may recall that he had been expelled from the ICC Elite Umpiring Panel a few months previously as the governing body had lost confidence in his umpiring, that decision in effect prohibited him to officiate any match which might have involved the full members of the ICC body.

The dilemma is, how can one set of rules be flexed to accommodate his employment in any capacity whatsoever. A choice has to be made to decide if he is at all capable of umpiring a cricket match and no ambiguity should lie there at all. It is for the record that he was not accused of cheating but there was enough suspcision in his umpiring style to keep him away from officiating anything under the ICC banner, be it the Big League or the Peewee League.

Short of a full expulsion, it is without doubt a pleasure to watch this legendary umpire baby sitting the ICC Little League. I anxiously await his reaction when and if he finds the Kenyans tampering the ball, this time I am sure he will think twice before lifting the accusatory finger.

From Cricinfo
The ICC has appointed Darrell Hair to stand as an official umpire in the triangular one-day series in Mombasa involving Kenya, Scotland and Canada which starts next week.

In November, Percy Sonn, the ICC president, announced that Hair would “not be appointed to international matches involving ICC Full Members”. He added: “The board has discussed this matter with great sincerity and gave lots of attention to it and they’ve come to the conclusion that they’ve lost confidence in Mr Hair.”

The announcement, which came from Cricket Kenya, clearly caught the ICC unprepared, and a spokesman told Cricinfo that there would be no formal media release until Sunday. The ICC added that this news did not represent an about-turn, while insisting that Hair is still banned from officiating in any matches involving Full Member sides.

The Kenyan authorities said the other on-field umpires were Ian Gould (Eng) and Buddhi Pradhan (Nepal) while the match referee would be Javagal Srinath.