If there's a spare seat on the fence, you can be sure the ICC will find it. Today's punishment of Inzamam-ul-Haq was a depressingly inevitable fudge that will appease all parties except the designated patsy, Darrell Hair. Inzamam's nominal punishment - he will miss four one-day internationals for bringing the game into disrepute - is overshadowed by the fact that he and his side were found not guilty of the more significant charge of ball-tampering.
The judgement provokes all manner of questions: what damage to the ball did the umpires Hair and Billy Doctrove see that the match referee Ranjan Madugalle could not? What happens to Law 42.3, which governs ball-tampering, now? Why was Inzamam only given the absolute minimum punishment for a Level 3 offence? What have one-day internationals got to do with an offence committed in Test cricket? Has the authority of the umpire been fatally undermined? Why are the ICC apparently so afraid of punishing subcontinental countries? Why should any side accept accusations of ball-tampering ever again? What umpire will risk having his reputation shredded over a judgement that intrinsically requires a degree of subjectivity?
Many will feel that, as with Fifa's punishment of Marco Materazzi for abusing Zinedine Zidane in the World Cup final, this is a verdict which legitimates player disorder. It used to the be that the referee/umpire's word was final. Now it seems that an incident cannot be resolved until the accused party has bleated. As Tony Soprano regularly laments, whatever happened to Gary Cooper? What happened to the strong, silent type? What happened to accepting the verdict of an authority figure? More than ever, as anyone who has endured Ashley Cole's recent publicity will tell you, sport is full of whingers, bluffers, spoilt brats who can't handle hardship, who reject accountability. And miserable verdicts like the ICC's today will allow them to do it again and again.
