| Droll Reversals  In cricket's crisis mode, which come all too frequently, a familiar cast takes its place: the roguish East, the racist West, the inept ICC. Stick all the cliches into a box and rattle them around and they will still fit: the roguish West, the inept East, the racist ICC. And if you believe the East can't be racist and the West can't be inept, you probably think match-fixing was early advertising for shaadi.com. What if we could rattle around those in cricket's latest drama and put Pakistan's Aleem Dar in Darrell Hair's place and Ricky Ponting in Inzamam-ul-Haq's? The debate would shift-like a tectonic plate. Dar may not be a confrontationist umpire but when the mood takes them, the noble Aussies can play the brats, quite beautifully: remember Ponting's angry protests and wild gestures after being run out by an England substitute in the 2005 Ashes? In the Dar vs Ponting bout for the title of the "bravest man in the game", the Pakistanis will come leaping out of the red corner with the headline "Man of Daring". It will be met by vituperative Aussie counter-attack of "Dar-stardly Act". The English would sway between relief (free Test win), suspicion (clearly Troy Cooley has passed on one secret too many) and condescension (after all, who gave the subcontinent the gifts of bureaucracy, pedantry and er, cricket?). The BCCI would remain mysteriously silent, Ponting would say the umpire had not acted in the "spirit of the game," no one would say, "Typical Aleem" and still Geoff Boycott would feel compelled to hector the world on people skills. The release of Dar's e-mail with an offer to stand down for $500,000 would cause a western tsunami of piousness, the biggest since the age of Puritanism. Darrell Hair would call the e-mail a blot on all umpires' integrity and with a rueful shake of his head say, "I would have handled this whole affair very differently." Indian TV channels would protest vociferously at the ICC's victimisation of an Asian running shows titled "Dar Dar Ki Thokar". The world's leading Pakistan experts like Dean Jones would weigh in, "Aww, some of my best friends are Pakistani, but I tell ya, mate, corruption is a way of life over there, in Pakistan and India.... and terrorism, awww, you gotta mention terrorism." Apologies from Dar would be brushed aside as the sentimental melodrama beloved of Asian shysters. Alarmed by all the smell, the BCCI would finally make its move. And sign a five-year deal with Hugo Boss to be the Indian cricket team's official perfume. | 
