The Gora Arrogance

There are very few occasions when I feel like taking side of Pakistan. One of them happened a few days back at The Oval. A lot has been written & talked about what happened between the Pakistani cricket side & Darrel Hair. However the real drama was to unfold only a couple of days later when the latter made a demand of $500,000 if he is taken off the Elite Panel of umpires.

Now I must say that it takes real courage to make this kind of demand and that too to a global governing body. And the most surprising thing is that till date Hair has not been booked for any offence, while Inzamam has been charged with couple of, at best, ‘technical’ offences.

Hair’s demand is one of the best examples of ‘Gora Arrogance’. I don’t think any non-goras have guts to even think on these lines, forget actually making such a demand. And mind you, despite of who’s who, which includes Dicky Bird as well, taking pot-shots at him, the guy is absolutely unfazed about the entire situation.

Recently I read about winners of this year’s Stella Awards – these are conferred upon the successfully contested weirdest of the law-suits. One of the awards went to a thief who broke into a house when the family was away on vacation. Through the back-door of the house, he entered the garage only to find that the gate of garage is non-functional and the door has closed behind him. For 15 days till the family returned, he had to survive on the dried dog food that he found in one of the corners of the garage. Unbelievable, but the thief successfully sued the family, whose house he had broken into.

If Mr. Hair really manages to get that moneybag out of ICC, am sure he would be running for the Stella Award.