A change in the weather

You can usually rely on Richard Boock to find the downside to anything, but today he surprises his readers by running his eye over the recent ball-tampering fiasco and finding the bright side. The key to Richard's conclusion are comments by arbitrator Ranjan Madugalle expressing bemusement at the umpires' failure to take a moderate line on the ball-tampering issue given that "it is an allegation of cheating". Boock concludes that the whole issue has done the game a great service because "world cricket has identified an elite umpire who, through his bloody-mindedness and lack of tact, can be considered more an enemy of the game than a servant of it."

I guess Boock is not going to be on Darrell Hair's Christmas card list. But he isn't the only one. Darrell seems to be running out of friends very quickly indeed.