Saturday, 26 August 2006

Boock's summary

Richard Boock's history of ball-tampering and mistakes by Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove in this morning's Herald may be excellent, but it already seems redundant thanks to last night's new revelations.

1 comment:

Insolent Prick said...

Mike,

I've blogged on this at
http://insolentprick.blogspot.com/2006/08/la-recherche-du-temps-urdu-in.html#c115681125176572314

The issue shouldn't be about ball tampering, but Inzy bringing the game into disrepute by refusing to play.

My own view is that ball-tampering should not be an issue that umpires need to form a judgement on during a game. The issue should be about the quality of the ball. It should be a strict liability on the fielding team to protect the quality of the ball: failure to do so would lead to an immediate replacement ball and five penalty runs to the batting side.

That would take the immediate heat out of ball-tampering during the game. The umpire could then cite the team if he believes that ball tampering may have occurred, and an evidential-based decision made in a disciplinary hearing.