How can we hope to win the war on tampering when Bush doesn't even know the rules? Shall we submit to the international Islamo-tamperers? Has Democracy no future in umpiring?

This article really should have probed deeper into the heart of the challenges facing cricket today.

Too soon...

;)

A good article. Its a vexed question. Some more here http://weekbyweek7.blogspot.com/2006/08/darrell-hair-pakistan-hairy-chests-all.html#links if interested

The lollies should come out of the mouths of the cricketers and the Lolly out of cricket.Are lawyers necessary in a game when cricket played between friends should be fun.

Very clever and very funny and very sobering. Whether it should have been filed under "sport" is debatable, but then it couldn't really go under "humour". This household chose to chuckle.

Of course all this issue really shows is that cricket really needs to adopt post-modernist 'rules', or rather 'non-rules', where fairness can only be defined according to the narrative that has shaped the culture of origin of the players.

That is, if a team says that they don't cheat, according to their defining narrative they indeed do not cheat. If a bowler says that they do not chuck, then their narrative confirms that they do not chuck. After all, its only 15° of difference between chucking and not chucking, maybe the difference should be whatever the bowler thinks it should be?

In fact, why do we even need umpires in the game of cricket? If, as some teams state, they never cheat, then it is not necessary to have anyone to adjudicate, just the individual players to decide whether they have been been fairly bowled or run out, or whether a ball has been fairly bowled.