Hair Today, Democracy Tomorrow

THE LAST few weeks have been turbulent ones in the usually placid waters of that most gentlemanly of sports, cricket. In fact, the last twelve months have been just as bad. It all began when one Australian Umpire, Darrell Hair, decided (with seemingly little proof beyond his Aussie intuition) that the Pakistani team had been cheating and the ensuing furore leading to Mr Hair, in his own inimitable way, offering to resign.

But this was no typical offer of resignation; he sent an email to his boss, a man named Doug Cowie, asking for $500,000 in return for being willing to "retire/stand down/ relinquish [his] position." This was a breathtaking course of action however you look at it. Either the man himself had decided that his time was up, and it was worth covering his back in case he is left with nothing, or he simply had had enough of pussyfooting around the law-makers of his sport and wants to get out. Offering his resignation in exchange for cash seems to be the action of a man not especially enamoured with the sport he has devoted his life to.

This story developed into a full-blown court case, as Hair took the International Cricket Council to a tribunal for racial discrimination, which dragged on until now. His argument was that his fellow Umpire on that fateful day, West Indian Billy Doctrove, faced none of the vilification afterwards, even though both Umpires are meant to be equal.

The court case, we can assume, was another attempt for the mercenary Hair to accrue some retirement money. He had gone from ‘Cash for Resignations’, his effort last year, to what the ICC argued was effectively extortion. He backed down, we are told, with all the magnanimity one would expect from an Umpire who tried to sell his own career back to his employees. After accusing them of being racist towards him.

‘Cash for Resignations’ was a marvellous idea of Hair’s, and one which could have caught on - last Summer we were all wondering when Tony Blair would call it a day. If only he’d have set a price, we could have got rid of him months earlier, the nation’s biggest ever whip-round would no doubt have taken on Children in Need proportions and produced millions in a good cause.

Now, as PM Brown seems perfectly happy to settle his sizeable behind into Tony’s chair, other targets appear. The fans of any football teams afflicted by the presence of Ken Bates or Peter Ridsdale, perhaps. Or Chelsea fans, stricken by conscience, having fundraisers in order to get rid of Peter Kenyon, currently vying with Michael Winner for the title of World’s Worst Man. Spurs fans could sell a kidney each to oust the sinister, Jol-hating Daniel Levy.

A fantasy, perhaps, but, as Umpire Hair tried hard to show us, a "Cash for Resignations" scandal could work. In politics, cash for peerages fizzled out, cash for questions is just old hat; surely the successor to these two noble scandals is apparent?