Cricket: Turnabout is fair play as Hair plays the racism card; THE LAST WORD.

Byline: Alan Poole

POETIC JUSTICE is one of the most regularly recurring themes in the history of drama, having been contemplated by just about everybody from Aristotle to Homer Simpson at one time or another.

One would like to believe that the device is a reflection of real life, and that Kismet habitually contrives a suitably ironic twist to ensure that miscreants who have evaded the rule of law eventually reap what they have sown.

And, if there is any truth in the theory, it would surely be supremely apt retribution if umpire Darrell Hair succeeds in his 'racial discrimination' suit and extracts large wedges of compensation cash from the Pakistan Cricket Board and the International Cricket Council.

Not that I think for a second that there is any substance to his central complaint that he, a white man, carried the can for last summer's infamous forfeited Test while fellow umpire Billy Doctrove, a black West Indian, escaped without any censure.

But it's hard to disagree with his solicitors' contention that he suffered "appalling" treatment because - without a shred of evidence being presented, much less examined, let alone upheld - he was effectively found guilty of being a bigot, an official whose decisions are shaped, at least in part, by the colour of the players under his control.

Now let's accept for the sake of argument that Hair got it hopelessly wrong when he accused Pakistan of cheating during the fourth Test. Let's assume that any damage to the ball was inflicted innocently - a random ricochet off an outcrop of Oval concrete, perhaps - rather than via the sly intervention of a fielder. Let's agree that the Lincolnshire-domiciled Australian is a humourless martinet without a hint of man-management skills whose intractability transformed a minor drama into an international crisis.

None of that matters in the slightest. The fact remains that he was perfectly entitled to make the call and that the rules left the tourists with no option but to absorb his five-run penalty and reserve any complaints for a post-match inquiry.

In the event, Inzamam-ul-Haq's side completely surrendered the moral high ground by staging their sit-in protest, belatedly scampering out of the pavilion when they realised that Hair had called their bluff and declared that they had conceded the match.

And the aftermath of that unprecedented decision produced some shameful administrative manoeuvring as Pakistan tried to salvage an alibi for their behaviour by casting wild aspersions about Hair's motivation while the ICC, terrified that the political ramifications of the row could create a black/white schism in the sport, crudely sabotaged their employee's case by publishing details of his private correspondence.

They were no doubt strengthened in their resolve by the attitude of the specialist media, many of them former international cricketers, who almost unanimously came down against the umpire.

Much of the coverage abandoned any pretence at journalistic neutrality with Mihir Bose, now the BBC's Sports Editor, then a columnist on the Daily Telegraph, producing a particularly outrageous piece of character assasination.

He kicked off with a bit of quasi-mystical gobblygook which implied that Pakistan's reaction was due to the fact that they are more honourable men than your average cricketer.

"As far as Inzaman was concerned, what Hair was doing was to call into question his own, and Pakistan's, izzat.

"Izzat is an Urdu word that can be translated as 'honour', but it means much more than that, and izzat is a much prized commodity in the subcontinent. It is something that Inzamam, a quiet, deeply religious man, values highly.

"Inzamam is one of those Pakistanis who passionately believes that a man can lose everything he has, including his life - but not his izzat. For him, the manner in which Hair took the decision as much as the decision itself meant that Inzamam's personal izzat, and that of his beloved Pakistan, had been besmirched."

And he followed up with this truly disgraceful aside.

"A story common in Pakistan cricket is that back in the mid-1990s, on a tour of Australia, Hair lectured the then Pakistan captain and told him: "I hope you people will not in this series carry on appealing like monkeys." This may be an apocryphal story, but it is one that is widely believed in Pakistani cricket and, of course, has racial overtones."

Why stop there? Why not throw in: "A man in my local reckons that Hair is

a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who uses slave labour to pick potatoes on his Spalding smallholding. This may be an apocryphal story but I thought I'd throw it in anyway because, if it was true, it would mean that he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work who can't be trusted an inch."

Implying, however obliquely, that somebody is a racist is a massive deal these days and Hair has every right to defend his mauled reputation with all the means at his disposal.

One rather suspects that he will find his charge impossible to substantiate, but he has at least put it into words rather than leave it hovering, unspoken, in the background.

And if his accusers are as offended by the legal retaliation as their initial reaction suggests, they will perhaps ponder on the dangers of pepping up their version of events with a little bit of dramatic licence.

CAPTION(S):

MEETING OF MINDS ...Darren Hair debates the state of the ball with Pakista captain Inzamam-ul-Haq' and fellow umpire Billy Doctrove