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Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove awarded five runs to England (penalised Pakistan) as they found out the ball has been tampered with. Pakistan did not stop play at that point. There was no fury, national pride, no nothing. The game went on. During the tea-break, in the comforts of the pavilion, a storm started to gather in the Pakistani tea-cup. Suddenly, Inzi and his team realised that it is their national pride that has been questioned not by the umpires but by one umpire - Darrell Hair! Pakistani team, by refusing to go out and play -- let the game down. After a little while, Pakistani team came down to continue playing cricket. It is a fact that Pakistani players played after being penalised, and they expressed a willingness to play after the umpires decided to call the match off. Something happened in the Pakistani dressing room. Was there a call from Pakistan -- asking them to stop playing? If you check the TV images, you'll notice that Inzi is clearly confused about what is ...

I came across this article written by Ayaz Memon in DNA Sunday . LK Advani’s decision to revive the Ram Mandir issue during his current rathyatra brings back vivid memories of December 6, 1992 — when the Babri Masjid was demolished — and its aftermath. We were in Cape Town where India was playing a one-day international against South Africa in a day-night game. During the break between innings or thereabouts, news filtered in (through the All India Radio commentary team, I think) of the mayhem in Ayodhya. There was hushed silence for a while among the Indians in the press enclosure, followed by agitated discussions, and then a flurry of calls back home to check if everything was all right. When the match resumed after the break, India were fielding and seemed to be making things difficult for the South African batsmen till things suddenly began to go haywire. India’s best fielder — and captain then — Mohammed Azharuddin dropped three catches, two of them skiers, which he would normally...

On 21st August, it was published on the ICC website: Changing the condition of the ball Inzamam has been charged, as captain, with a breach of Level 2.10 of the ICC Code which relates to changing the condition of the ball in breach of Law 42.3 of the Laws of Cricket. This charge was brought by the on-field umpires Billy Doctrove and Darrell Hair on Sunday. If Inzamam is found guilty of breaching this provision he faces a fine of between 50 and 100 per cent of his match fee and/or a one Test or two ODI ban. Bringing the game into disrepute Inzamam has also been charged, as captain, with a breach of C2 at Level 3 of the Code which relates to conduct that brings the player or the game of cricket into disrepute. This charge was brought by the on-field umpires Billy Doctrove and Darrell Hair along with the third and fourth umpires Peter Hartley and Trevor Jesty following a meeting on Monday morning. ---- If the ICC rewards Hair for keeping quiet, it means Pakistan is guilty and the ...

ICC wants to shove the ball tampering controversy under the magic Arabian carpet in their Dubai office. Malcolm Speed the CEO of ICC says, "Did the Pakistan team change the nature of the ball in an illegal manner under the Laws of Cricket and did its refusal to take the field after the tea interval bring the game into disrepute?" He must be kidding, why is he having second thoughts when all it takes is to take a look at the ball. If he finds it smooth and shiny, he should get rid of the controversial Hair. Further evidence of ICC's spineless character was revealed today when Speed said, "We also need some advice about the power of the executive board to in effect overturn a properly laid Code of Conduct charge by an umpire." If the ball was not tampered why didn't Prcoter or ICC do anything for all these days? Where is that ball now? This is a major cover up -- no transparency at all. Whether these half-baked lawyers are competent to run the game is what eve...

Umpire's decision is final. Every cricket player knows that. If given out, no batsman indulges in a sit-in hoping that the umpire would reverse his decision. Final. Full Stop. At the Oval, on a Sunday afternoon, the umpires were convinced that the Pakistani players played a little too much with the ball – which means they tampered the ball to make it reverse-swing. Pakistani skipper also removed Umar Gul from the bowling attack. Did he do the unthinkable to the cricket ball like Shoaib Akhtar, Waqar Younis and Mohammed Akram did in the last few years? Not to forget the tricks of the great Imran 'bottle-cap' Khan, who says he mastered the trick in the English soil – while playing county cricket for Sussex. Too many Champions and Winners have been caught doping in the last two months. Floyd Landis, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones – all have turned the whole idea of participating in sport into a shameful act of winning at all costs. But hey, Pakistan cricket team hates umpire Hair...

Wish Sri Lanka returns to peace. The war has been too costly for the island nation - too many innocent people killed. All in the name of power and control. Vallipunam: A Sri Lankan Tragedy 2006-08-20 By Tisaranee Gunasekara "The Sinhalese polity had two choices. One is to treat the Tamils as a fifth column to be degraded and marginalised by a mixture of violence, attrition and deceit. The second is to trust them, take the plunge into federalism and build up a relationship of amity." The UTHR (Ketheeswaran Loganathan and the Tamil dissidents’ dilemma – 15.8.2006) The Tigers say that the Vallipunam air raid targeted an orphanage hosting a leadership and first aid training workshop for school girls of Mullaitivu and Killinochchi. The government contends that it was a LTTE training camp for child soldiers. Either way we can be sure that the young participants did not have much of a choice about their presence in Vallipunam at 7 am on 14th August 2006. If the LTTE is correct, the ...

Rumours of Castro’s ’57 death had been greatly exaggerated By HERBERT L. MATTHEWS 1957 New York Times Fidel Castro, the rebel leader of Cuba’s youth, is alive and fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable fastnesses of the Sierra Maestra, at the southern tip of the island. President Fulgencio Batista has the cream of his army around the area, but the army men are fighting a losing battle. This is the first sure news that Fidel Castro is still alive and still in Cuba. No one connected with the outside world, let alone with the press, has seen Senor Castro except this writer. This account will break the tightest censorship in the history of the Cuban Republic. The Province of Oriente with its 2,000,000 inhabitants is shut off from Havana as surely as if it were another country. Havana does not know that thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro and the new deal for which they think he stands, and a fierce government counterterrorism campaign ...

Better be careful if you are in the US and want to buy a ciggy lighter. You could be arrested for conspiring to detonate the nuclear arsenal the US has been piling up over the years. America's attitude towards anyone with a Middle Eastern origin is not too shocking. In Chinua Achebe's wonderful piece of writing 'Things Fall Apart' -- there is a passage where African tribal men sit around eating and drinking, contemptuously referring to white men, comparing their white skin to lepers’ white skin. One can understand the ignorance of the African tribals; they thought all white men are lepers! If America as a nation is as ignorant as the African tribals were 100 years ago... it is time to salvage their souls from the dark depths of ignorance. UN should set up an Educational Aid programme to help the ignorant and ill-educated American population, which includes the President of the US. 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges CARO, Mich. — Three Texas men were arraigned Satur...

There is a war going on in the Middle East; one in Iraq and the other in Lebanon. It is a war against innocent civilian population, played out by faceless enemies of humanity. Is it only a war in the name of religion, gods, and land? It is also a war in the name of black gold – OIL! The United States and Britain are only too happy to occupy Iraq and see various parts of it blow up. Iraq's sin is that it has a lot of Oil. But, then, Iraqis are not enough educated and sophisticated people to understand that no one really cares about whether it is Shia oil or Sunni oil. It is a crying shame that Iraqis kill each other in the name of the two factions of Islam – again their only reason for killing is to set the supremacy – and to gain power. Saddam knew too well that Oil was more powerful than anything else in today's world. And Oil is the very reason why he was toppled and put behind bars. It wasn't Saddam's Human Rights violations that the Western governments were too con...

'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?' Robert Fisk: 31 July 2006 They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. " Mehdi Hashem, aged seven ­ Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 ­ Qana", "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one ­ Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses. You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity ­ yes, if the Israeli air force trul...

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