My sympathies are with Pakitan entirely. To accuse a team of cheating, while the game is in progress, is not remotely comparable with an lbw decision, as someone claimed above.

If such a serious accusation can be resolved by awarding a mere five penalty runs, then that itself is a nonsence. In many sports cheating would mean disqualification, or at least that the offender be dismissed from the field.

In this case it would seem that Pakistan were accused - and found guilty - on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. The match was being filmed by 21 television cameras, and all the indications today are that not one of those cameras picked up any untoward behaviour. The ball in question, in the course of its 56-over life, was hit beyond the field of play on several occasions and at least twice landed on concrete terracing after travelling more than 100 metres. It would be a brave adjudicator who could say such a ball had been tampered with illegally if there turns out to be no witness or film evidence.   

Certainly the Pakistan protest was misguided and immature, but it can hardly be a surprise that they were incensed. It would not have been unreasonable for the umpires to reflect, and cut them some slack. If forfeiture of the match was as straightforward a matter as Villan suggests it was, why could the authorities still not say at 10.30pm lat night whether the match was over?

Was it really beyond the parties involved to resolve the matter to more positive effect, in all those hours of negotiation? My guess is that it will turn out to be the bloody-minded intransigence of umpire Hair, as demonstrated before, that's at the root of this matter.

Villan says Hair is disliked by the PAkistanis. I think it would be fairer to say they have no confidence in him as an umpire. But if Villan was really intending to be fair, he might have gone on to say that Hair has crossed swords with several teams - India, Sri Lanka and New Zealand also having filed complaints against his decisions. So far the ICC have defended Hair through every crisis he's created. But with any luck, he's stood in his last test.