It's just not cricket

Well that ends possibly my most interesting day at cricket, but for all the wrong reasons.

For those that don't know, this afternoon, the umpires thought that the ball was misbehaving and so asked to have a look at it. They decided that it had been artificially tampered with, penalised the Pakistan team 5 runs, changed the ball and continued until an early tea break was forced by bad light. However, after tea, once the umpires had come out, and the English batsmen were ready to come out, there was no sign of the Pakistan team. The umpires then returned inside, as some of the Pakistan team emerged briefly. A few minutes later, the umpires came back onto the pitch, followed by the English batsmen, but still no Pakistan team.



Having waited for the requisite two minutes, the umpires removed the bails and departed. Then, a flurry of activity around the Pakistan dressing room with various suited men going in and out meant that, about 20 minutes later, the Pakistan team finally emerged onto the pitch to a round of boos.

This wasn't the end of it though, as now the umpires were refusing to come out onto the pitch, having ruled that they had given the Pakistan team enough opportunities to continue with the game, and by not doing so they had forfeited the game, and so the Pakistani team returned to their dressing room.

All through this, the only way I could tell what was going on was by listening to the Radio or TV, and they didn't really have that much more information. The information and explanations from the Oval staff was awful to be honest.

So anyway, it appears that the Pakistani stance was that they wanted to register a protest at being called cheats (when they adamantly believed they had done nothing wrong) by delaying the start of the final session for a few minutes. This all seems to have been miscommunicated and mishandled leading to this situation. I personally think their stance is entirely justified if they truly do feel wronged (Although maybe there were better ways to handle the situation). One time I was running the line for the Sunday league football team I ran when the referee refused to acknowledge my flag and accused me of cheating which I would never do, even to the annoyance of my own team. Anyway, I wasn't going to have any of that so I walked over to him, threw his flag at him and walked off (I guess I'm lucky I didn't get reported, but there was no way I was continuing in that situation).

Anyway, this was an exciting end to four varied days at the cricket, with rain intervals, batting collapses, long wicketless periods, more rain delays, Pietersen crashing the ball to all corners and much more.

I do think the best bit might have been the packed lunches we got from Tina every day though, all nicely labelled in case there was any confusion as to what was included: -




Also we met footballer Dion Dublin, who was sat a couple of rows behind us on Friday. In the brief chat we had, I found out that he will be playing for a team this season, just not decided who yet. Also, the Celtic fans were mental, but the Man U fans often subdued, and playing in an Old Firm derby was incredible and he was surprised he didn't get sent off. Top bloke, spent time chatting to everybody who recognised him.