Cricket, lovely cricket........

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21082006/323/pakistan-cricket-legends-slam-mini-hitler-umpire.html.

I've done a fair bit of umpiring in my time both as a schoolteacher in London and Bristol and at Club First Division and Schoolboy County Cricket levels. So I've got a lot of sympathy for Messrs Hair and Doctrose and rather less for the petulant attitude of the Pakistan team and less still for what I see as the attempts to excuse their petulance by commentators who ought to know better.

I don't know whether the ball was tampered with or not. Nor do Botham, Hussain et al. It will be for an ICC investigation to determine whether it was or no. The umpires on the field and with the thing in their hands evidently thought it had been, so they changed it and the game continued for over an hour thereafter. The real issue is not, then, the decision on this. The real issue is that, after an hour or more off the field for bad light and the tea interval, the Pakistan team decided, for reasons best known to themselves, not to resume play when invited to do so - twice, as it happens.

If they felt they needed to launch a protest they had bags of time to do it during the time off the field. They aren't an Under 12 School XI. They are experienced, professional cricketers and they know (or should know) the Laws and that the Umpires have no choice but to act in accordance with them. Once a decision has been made and the game has resumed under the new circumstances created by that decision, the decision cannot be revoked. For instance, once a batsman has been given out and a new one has taken his place, the original one cannot be put in again if someone (even the umpire himself) convinces the umpire that he made a mistake in giving him out in the first place. To use Blair's expression 'you move on' and the original decision has to stand.

The Laws, accepted the world over, provide that, when resuming after an interval the same procedure applies as at the start of play - the umpires check the time and call 'play'. If there's no-one to bowl, or no batsman has appeared, the match will be deemed by the umpires to have been forfeited by the absent side. There's no provision for a side not appearing because it feels hurt by a decision made 2 hours earlier. Pakistan know that fine well - so do all those commentators on TV and in the press who are happy to make out that it's all Mr. Hair's fault, or the ICC's fault... or anybody's fault......except Pakistan's.

It's a dreadful way for any match to end, but the cause of cricket will not be well served by the kind of cringe that we've been getting from commentators.

......On the subject of building projects

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/01082006/325/wembley-fa-cup-final-2008.html.

This is worrying. Not very long ago they were confidently assuring us that the 2006 Cup Final would be played at Wembley. Now even 2007 seems out of the question. It's of a piece with the Scottish Parliament and numerous other projects - horrendously late and seriously over-budget. One wonders how deep is the involvement of this, the most incompetent government this coutry has ever had, bar none!

Let's hope that Seb Coe and his team can do a better job on the 2012 Olympics........

Amateur theatricals

The big political issue since the local election in May has raged around the Kingston Theatre.

The Lib Dems, having scarcely mentioned the topic in their election material only three months ago, decided that the deal whereby GMH ( owned by local resident Mr. Auchi) was to put up the remaining £3.4 million to fit out the theatre was no go. Mr. A's advisers were trying to impose over-onerous conditions. When exactly the Administration members knew this was going to be the case remains a matter of some doubt, but what emerged a very short time after the election was that they had decided that the Council would find the necessary funds itself from wherever. Our Scrutiny Panel, now Conservative dominated, called in the Executive's decision and found that it had not fulfilled its fiduciary duty to the CT payers in taking on a new commitment with budgetary implications which was risky and for which there was no electoral mandate. The decision was referred back to them, they having already decided on a reference to full Council. The full Council debate showed in a recorded vote a united front in favour of the spending proposal by all the Lib Dem councillors and against it by all the Conservative and Labour ones.

I hope that the theatre will now produce the revenues which will enable it to fund its own running costs and to meet the other financial obligations which have been taken on. I am sincere in hoping this, but I am also sincere in having some doubts about the prospect of this and fears that the theatre will find itself looking to the CT payers to bail it out of financial difficulties in the future ad infinitum. I just can't help recalling that we were told in 1998 that we could have this theatre without any financial commitment of public funds by the Council and that this proved an all-too-forlorn hope. Supporters point to a newspaper article last year which said that the theatre would bring £11million a year into the Borough. I read the article and looked in vain for convincing evidence in support of this assertion.

We shall see what we shall see.

Now the dust has settled.............

Having taken on the job of agent for all 48 of our candidates at the Kingston Borough election I inevitably found myself with a pretty full time job for a month getting their election expense returns completed, signed and returned. At the same time I have been working to update my knowledge of matters environmental to fit my new role as shadow to the Executive member for Environment and Sustainability. This means, among other things, listening to the people she doesn't listen to as well as the ones she does. We are to start a major scrutny of the waste management programme next month, so quite a bit of August will be taken up with getting that up and running.