A truly Hair raising experience

October 9, 2003 by neil manthorp

Five years ago the dri­ve from Faisal­abad to Rawalpin­di was one the scari­est expe­ri­ences of the nation­al squad’s col­lec­tive life. The bus dri­ver was clear­ly under instruc­tions to main­tain his speed above 50 kilo­me­tres an hour at all times and nev­er, ever to drop below that speed — through traf­fic lights, cir­cles, impromp­tu street mar­kets and…oncoming traffic.

The expe­ri­ence this time could not have been more dif­fer­ent for Graeme Smith and his men. It’s dif­fi­cult to know why and how the econ­o­my of Pak­istan has done so well with wars going on around them, but a mag­nif­i­cent, brand new high­way now exists between the cities allow­ing chil­dren to play with their dogs in safety.

The SA nation­al team’s safe­ty was also para­mount on Wednes­day’s dri­ve with the jeeps and motor­cy­cle out­rid­ers pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty that was not only clas­si­fied as pres­i­den­tial but looked and felt like it, too.

But if it was­n’t the roads and traf­fic get­ting under the team’s skin this year, there was some­thing else mak­ing the hair on the back of their necks stand up. Daryl Hair appeared to take par­tic­u­lar delight in con­tin­u­ing his hate-hate rela­tion­ship with SA’s play­ers, a state of affairs that saw Andrew Hall threat­ened with a ban and Shaun Pol­lock fined his entire match fee.

Hair is an enor­mous man but his phys­i­cal size is matched only by the size of his ego. The best umpires, with­out excep­tion, know they are sim­ply there to help pro­vide the best stage pos­si­ble on which the world’s best play­ers can per­form. Hair, unfor­tu­nate­ly, not only believes he is part of the pro­duc­tion, he believes he is at the heart of it.

Sports­men with big egos tend to pan­ic and ‘hide’ when they get some­thing wrong rather than hold their hands up, take stock of the sit­u­a­tion and make a calm deci­sion — even if it’s an admis­sion of error.

So when Yousuf Youhana was run out by Andrew Hall with an acci­den­tal deflec­tion of his own bowl­ing, at Hair’s end, the big man knew he’d missed it, pan­icked and called ‘not out’ instead of call­ing for the third umpire.

Hall, under intense pres­sure from author­i­ties to behave after his phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion with Youhana in the pre­vi­ous match, looked at Hair and said sim­ply: “I touched it.” It was the kind of com­ment play­ers make to umpires all the time — it was low-key, unprovoca­tive and cer­tain­ly not dissentful.

Yet Hair snapped back, telling Hall that if he said anoth­er word he would be report­ed to the match ref­er­ee for dis­sent and, there­fore, almost cer­tain­ly banned for a match, pos­si­bly two.

Lat­er in the match Pol­lock took it upon him­self to alert Hair to his ear­li­er error and, gen­tly, to sug­gest to the (very) big Aussie that he was­n’t, per­haps, hav­ing a very good match. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the obser­va­tion came hard on the heels of yet anoth­y­er reject­ed lbw appeal from the for­mer skipper.

It is a well known fact, with­in crick­et­ing cir­cles, that play­ers lose their cools with umpires in most match­es. The only rea­son it is not well known out­side crick­et­ing cir­cles is because good umpires know that tem­pers flare in the heat of the moment and as long as the play­er keeps his reac­tion and com­ment out of the pub­lic domain, the moment will be kept private.

Unless you hap­pen to be a cry-baby official.