| There was fury in England and Pakistan Monday over a ball-tampering row that gifted England an infamous Test match win -- with former Test star Imran Khan calling the umpire at the center of the dispute a "mini-Hitler." Meanwhile the Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Shaharyar Khan, said on Monday the board would not accept Australian umpire Darrell Hair for any matches.
"We are going to make it clear to the International Cricket Council that we are not going to play under the supervision of Hair in any future matches," Khan told Reuters.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is expected to pass further judgment on the unprecedented final Test controversy Monday.
England were handed the match at The Oval, London, and a 3-0 series victory, late Sunday after Pakistan failed to take the field in the evening session, having been accused of ball-tampering by the match umpires earlier in the day.
Thousands of cricket fans were furious that they were not told for some hours what was happening as far as the match went.
Those with tickets for the final day's play on Monday were also angry.
Although the ICC offices in Dubai were officially closed Monday due to the Ascension of the Prophet, a public holiday, match referee Mike Procter is composing a report on the incident which sparked the first forfeit in 1,814 Tests, the UK's Press Association said.
Pundits in Pakistan and ex-Pakistani internationals slammed Australian umpire Hair over the chaos.
Pakistan cricket great Imran Khan went so far Monday as to describe Hair as a "mini-Hitler," The Associated Press said.
"Hair-raising row turns Oval Test on its head," screamed the front page headline in Monday's usually conservative daily Dawn newspaper.
"Hold your nerves -- Hair comes trouble," read the headline splashed across the front page of the popular daily The News.
In England former test stars Geoff Boycott and Ian Botham blamed the International Cricket Council for the farcical scenes at The Oval.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Boycott said: "The ICC must be blind or stupid not to have realized that there is history between Darrell Hair, the umpire who accused them of changing the nature of the ball, and Pakistan."
"Pakistan regard Hair as an officious umpire and they don't like his style of man-management. It should have been obvious to the ICC that appointing him to this series created a situation like a volcano waiting to erupt."
Botham also criticized the ICC for failing to keep the 23,000-strong crowd informed about what was happening during the confusing scenes after tea.
"They are the mandarins who fiddled while the game slid towards anarchy at The Oval yesterday," Botham wrote in the Daily Mirror.
The drama began Sunday when umpires Hair and West Indian Billy Doctrove awarded England five penalty runs because, they said, Pakistan had tampered with the ball.
The Pakistan team stayed in the pavilion after the tea interval, in protest, when the umpires and England batsmen returned to the pitch.
After eight hours of meetings and negotiations, the International Cricket Council upheld the umpires' original decision that Pakistan's failure to return to the field was equivalent to a forfeit.
"It was indeed a farce most sordid" and "was nothing short of shameful," Imran Khan wrote in a front page article in daily The Nation.
Khan, who led Pakistan to victory in the 1992 World Cup, accused Hair of having a lead role in the outcome.
"Hair is one of those characters when he wears the white umpires coat, he metamorphoses into a mini Hitler," Khan wrote of the 53-year-old umpire.
Hair, renowned for having a strict interpretation of the rules, previously courted controversy by calling Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan for chucking -- or using an illegal bowling action -- seven times in a test match at Melbourne in 1995.
The incident is the latest in a series of incidents between the forthright Australian official and the Pakistan team, but no previous rows have been as serious.
The impasse continued into Sunday evening, with officials locked in discussions to save the fifth day's play, but to no avail.
"It is concluded with regret that there will be no play on the fifth day of the fourth Test on Monday," said a joint-statement by the English and Wales Cricket Board, the International Cricket Council and the Pakistan Cricket Board.
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