What....? We have a Forfeited Test match….?

Fortunately for cricket lovers of the world we still do not have a forfeited test match in Ashes history. For that matter forfeiting a Test match is never heard of in 129 years and 1813 test match history. That’s until today. With Pakistan forfeiting the 4th test at The Oval, a new chapter is now being written in the history of test cricket. It still puzzles me how the events were unfolded to let the Oval test take the course it has taken. Especially, as many as sixteen overs were bowled as England took their score from 230 for 3 to 298 for 4 after the triggering event.

At the end of the 56th over of England’s innings, which was Umar Gul’s 14th, England was cruising along at 230 for 3 and was getting closer to wiping out the deficit. Then the umpires Darrel Hair of Australia and Billy Doctrove of West Indies consulted each other while inspecting the ball and asked for a change of ball. Darrell Hair looked particularly very unhappy about the condition of the ball and also signaled the scorers for awarding five additional runs, which under the prevailing cricket laws means the fielding team may have tampered the ball to take advantage of the reverse swing that it would generate making it the first such occurrence of a 5 run penalty being imposed for ball-tampering. There were absolutely no signs at that time about the chaos that would unfold very soon in front of a packed and sell-out crowd at The Oval.

The game continued for further 16 overs when bad light stopped play and an early tea was taken. When play was about to start with both the umpires coming on to the field Pakistan refused to come on to the field as a protest over the ball tampering allegation and subsequent five runs penalty imposed on them. The umpires were soon joined by English batsmen Collingwood & Ian Bell but there were no signs of Pakistan team coming out. So at around 5 pm the umpires took of the bails indicating the conclusion of the test match. No announcement was made to the waiting public resulting in an utter confusion both in the stands and in commentary box. About an half an hour later Pakistani team took the field amidst the echoing boos only to know that Darrel Hair was not interested in coming back to the field and as per the Cricket Law 21.3 which says “"that, in the opinion of the umpires, a team refuses to play, the umpires shall award the match to the other side" the test match has officially ended

What baffles me most is why Pakistan waited till the break to protest. If they were upset for getting accused for ball tampering and therefore “Cheating” as put forth by their coach Bob Woolmer, they could have done it when the five penalty runs were awarded. Also puzzles me is the fact whether umpire Hair have enough evidence to bring such an anti-climactic end and controversial finish to an otherwise an evenly poised and extremely entertaining test match in which Pakistan had an upper edge.

Protesting over umpire's decision is not new to Test Cricket. In fact there were several incidents in test history in which the umpires were the targets of players’ fury and there by drawing their wrath, though most notable ones have occured during the modern times. First of such incident happened way back in 1973 test at Edgbaston between West Indies and England when Arthur Fagg refused to take the field for a while to protest against the West Indian Players reaction to one of his umpiring decisions. Clive Lloyd's West Indian team refused to take the field after the 3rd day's tea break unless umpire Fred goodall of New Zealand was replaced in the 1980 Dunedin test between New Zealand and West Indies causing a delay of 12 minutes. The organizers then managed to persuade the visitors to take the field. But situation worsened so much after that at one stage during the rest West Indies wanted to abandon the whole tour.  In 1987 test at Faisalabad, Shakoor Rana of Pakistan took one step further when he demanded a written apology from England Captain Mike Gatting before he came on to the field.