Well, the weekend press are having a field day. The consensus view appears to be that Speed was quite correct in making the contents of the Cowie/Hair emails 'public' for fear of being accused of lieing. Many respected journalists may be convinced by this but I'm not a journalist and I'm definitely not convinced. I know that if Freddie Flintoff had had an exchange of emails over contract issues with ECB it would have been considered bad form if the Chairman of ECB had made 'public' clear PRIVATE matters relating to issues that might hypothetically have occurred as a direct result of a infringement to do with the Laws of the game. Because of his iconic status the public would have stifled any criticism of our dear Freddie and called for the head of the ECB Chairman and most probably all concerned. Now Inzie may have iconic status in Pakistan and amongst politicians and many cricket lovers but surely the game itself must be protected. The role of ICC and all the other plethora of cricket boards around the world is to administer the game fairly and protect and enforce the Laws of the game. Backing their umpires 100% is a must. Period. I am not convinced that Cowie was the messenger in all this nor even the go between between Hair (who knows Billy may have similar emails too) and Richardson/Speed. Perhaps the trap was set over the numerous phone conversations between Hair & Cowie and then Cowie/Speed & Richardson. This crass engineering goes on all the time in the real world and perhaps cricket administrators are just the same. This cushy idealogical family of cricket lovers is being constantly presented to the public by respected journalists alike and quite often is questioned as eruptions sometimes occur (Mike Gatting's Shaka Rana shakedown springs to mind) and looking at the current make of the board I for one wouldn't trust these slippery law enforcement officials. How on earth did the current President get to where he is today? If I was an umpire in world cricket I would be seriously worried about whether I could trust any of them. Picture this...I am asked to go down to the sub-continent or NZ or wherever and I run into a patch of bother with the fuzzie wuzzies or arch fogies and my colleague and I upset an entire cricket team and a nation from the PM, President or Chief down and then some ass in ICC asks me to consider standing down and suggest PERHAPS that I'd like to think about it for 48 hours and then hastily put it down on email. As it turns out Hair is a lawyer (I had no idea until I read CricInfo this morning) and he didn't for one minute think that anything was amiss for asking for around £265,000 in compensation for getting CRICKET and Mr Speed out of a fix to do with alleged ball tampering etc etc. And you know what Hair's boss did....he shat on him big time.....and fed him to the wolves much to the enjoyment of millions of Pakistanis and officials in trilbees who would rather Hair behaved like an english gentleman on the pitch rather than a typical aussie wanting to uphold the Laws of the game. I'm sorry to be so brutal and crass myself in all this but I don't BUY it Mr Speed.
and another thing
Bob Woolmer's latest admissions that he wants the rules of ball abuse changed are indicative that something more sinister is afoot here. Barry Jarman's revelation that our old friend 'Bob' actually encouraged South African players during his tenure there as coach to 'work' the ball is pretty riveting stuff. Can it purely be coincidence that Pakistan requested his services purely on coaching terms? If as it now appears 'our Bob' has been of the opinion that the laws governing the use of the ball should be reviewed or whatever then it's not surprising that PCB approached him. If PCB can get these Laws changed or even quashed then that's good news for the up and coming asian swing bowlers and could radically shift the balance of power in playing terms towards Pakistan. I'm not going to dwell on Zaheer's role in the sit in but suffice to say that he did participate in a Test Match in Bangalore in similar circumstances a few years back that could have turned very nasty but didn't in the end.
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