Top 5 Most controversial cricket umpires ever

2. Darrell Hair (Australia):

The big man from Australia, was renowned for being too harsh particularly against the Asian nations. Hair made his debut in 1991 as an umpire and had created many ripples of controversies till 1995 for his wrong decisions. In 1995 he no-balled Muttiah Muralitharan for seven times in space of 3 overs for throwing. The fuming Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga took his team off the field though the team returned on the field after some time. As per the ICC rules, any suspect action was to be reported to the Match referee than calling it immediately on the field like Darrell Hair did. He even described Murali’s action as “diabolical”.

The streak of wrong decisions by Darrell Hair persisted with time; greater drama unfolded in 2006 at the Oval. In the match, Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove ruled that Pakistani team tampered the ball and then Hair signaled for 5 penalty runs and asked for replacement of the ball. The infuriated Pakistanis didn’t take the field after the Tea session and after 30 minutes, the umpires took off the bails and England emerged as winners by forfeiture and such thing happened for the first time in cricket history. Finally, in 2008 Darrell Hair resigned from umpiring in International cricket.