Demoted umpire Darrell Hair has defended his handling of last year's abandoned Test match between England and Pakistan.
I fulfilled my obligations, says Australian umpire
Demoted umpire Darrell Hair has defended his handling of last year's abandoned Test match between England and Pakistan.
The Australian and fellow umpire Billy Doctrove ruled Pakistan had forfeited the match, when captain Inzamam-ul-Haq refused to play on after his side was penalised for alleged ball tampering.
Hair was dumped from cricket's elite umpiring panel after the infamous Test, and even agreed to a man-management course as part of his 'rehabilitation', but he insists he made the right call at The Oval.
"It's easy to say, look, if I'd known how to deal with communication and management issues then, if I knew then what I know now, I may have done things differently," he told a Sydney radio station.
"But there's a certain limit to what the umpire needs to do under those circumstances and I believe that both the umpires fulfilled those obligations both with the ball tampering and the refusal to play.
"A lot of people have said to me, 'You must be really annoyed with cricket' and the fact is, I'm not annoyed with cricket, it's just a couple of people made a strange decision to remove me from umpiring."
Unfit
The International Cricket Council (ICC) will decide in March whether to reinstate the 55-year-old to top-level umpiring. But Hair, who recently withdrew a racial discrimination claim he made against the governing body in the aftermath of the Test, insists he would umpire in Pakistan again.
"If that's what my contact says and they want me to umpire any Test match, well that's what we're there for."
However the Australian remains without the backing of Pakistan officials, who are adamant he should not return to the international ranks.
"At the moment our position is that Hair is unfit to officiate in the elite panel and it's up to the ICC to revisit the stance on him," Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Nasim Ashraf said.
