London Sept 30:
Darrell Hair, the controversial umpire from Australia and a member of the ICC elite panel of umpires, has decided to sue its employer ICC of racial discrimination in London.
The hearing gets under way in London from tomorrow as reported by the local newspaper in London. Dave Richardson, Malcolm Speed, David Morgan and Billy Doctrove are supposed to attend the hearing tomorrow to be held in Central London Employment Tribunal at Kingsway in Holborn.
Hair is suing the ICC for racial discrimination and racial harassment and seeking compensation for loss of earnings and injury to feelings that could be in excess of USD 1 million, while the barristers brought in by the two sides for the tribunal hearing, due to last until Oct 12, are not exactly bottom-of-the-range or bargain-basement.
Robert Griffiths, who not merely belongs to MCC but is a member of their committee will present Hair’s case before the jury. In addition to Gray`s Inn, he happens to have chambers in Sydney, where Hair has returned to live after three years in Lincolnshire. But the reason Hair has employed Griffiths is that last December he co-authored an article in the New Law Journal which was brought to Hair`s attention.
Griffiths in a column earlier wrote: that Hair and Doctrove jointly took the decision to change the ball and impose a five-run penalty against Pakistan, but his career has been ruined and Doctrove`s has not. For, subsequently, Hair has not stood in a match involving a Test-playing country, only minnows like Kenya. Until the end of March next year he is on contract to the ICC as a member of their elite panel of umpires, but that is all.
It will be a match between two-cricket loving barristers trained in Oxford University. Mark Beloff a member of the ICC’s Code of Conduct will argue ICC’s case.
Bureau Report
