Behind the face of cricket umpires

I have to hand it over to our friend Jonathan for this excellent post on the much debated issues related to umpires in cricket. You can read about it here. Don't forget to also see part 1 too. Jonathan's take on the increasing emphasis of specific umpires on some incidents taking the brunt of all the scrutiny by the fans and the media is well put out and the case of the extent of the workload, umpires like Asad Rauf and Simon Taufel have to endure, is an eye opener, as hardly any have ...

Let there be light ICC

What a downer! For the first time in this series, the game became very competitive in the match between England and India, going down 'almost' to the wire and bad light stopped play. Yeah I know... It was like getting close to an ejaculation and then being asked to make your next move in Chess. Out came the officials with their rather favorite and complicated Duckworth & Lewis African 'mumbo jumbo'. You ever wondered why these officials like the D&L mumbo jumbo so much. One, ...

The Zimbabwe cricket stand-off: what morality?

The buzz in world cricket is now on Zimbabwe with some nations primarily led by the ECB leading a vote towards getting them stripped out of their ICC elite panel membership and cutting the much needed funding for the growth of their cricket if there is any such thing. From the administrators of the game, sports journalists to players like Atherton and Gower, the call for the crucial support of India and the rest of Asia for this referendum has primarily been the voice in the media with the sp...

Hello cricket! How I missed you

Work has caught up with me. Now that I have none of the comforts offered by a salaried job and have to work my way hard through for a living. It's been apparent that cricket just got thrown out of my life for the last couple of weeks. Not a single match was watched by me and the only sporting action which I had managed to catch was some glimpses on the amazing football euro championship tournament. So the realization that has hit me is why it is extremely crucial for the twenty-20 format to t...

ICC hits a new low… Hair reinstated

In one of the most disgusting moves forced by the political arm-twisting of Cricket Australia, the ICC has reinstated Darrell Hair back into the elite panel. What is more puzzling is that the ICC has declared that Hair would not officiate in any of the Pakistan team matches, in a view to work some sort of shady compromise, which is now going to further break the rather fragile excuse of a system which is currently in place. Hair had penalized the Pakistan team for ball tampering, which led to...