Cricket Yesterday

I was actually at the Oval yesterday and up until the tea interval it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.
However I think the blame lies entirely with the umpires on this.

Firstly there has been no TV evidence that any member of the Pakistan team tampered with the ball. It was 56 overs old already when they awarded England 5 runs. By this point it has been smashed around for quite a few hours and any amount of damage could have been caused.

The Pakistan team were only registering a protest after tea for 5 minutes after tea and were always ready to continue playing. However due to the "timing out" law they then had to forfeit the game This law is fairly new and it appears that no-one in their team was aware of it's existence.

At this point the umpires should have informed them of this and it seems at no point this happened. A quick word in the ear should have solved this.

Finally why would Pakistan tamper with the ball at a point when they were an innings and a hundred runs ahead of England and totally on top of the whole game?

Darryl Hair has alot to answer for in my view.

Posted By: Cat and Canary, Aug 21, 09:56:21