As Malcolm Speed shines the axes blade on Darrell Hair’s umpiring career, a new question is emerging as to whether the ICC knew that such an email was about to hit their inbox.

Darrell Hair has intimated that his proposal to sail off into the sunset with half a million dollars, may not be quite the surprise to the ICC that they are portraying.

Hair, in his interview to the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, stated that;

“It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, I had dialogue with them. That was understood. I didn’t do it off the cuff.”

Hair has not been specific as to the nature and timing of the ‘dialogue’ but he is clearly implying that the ICC knew such a request was forthcoming.

Speed has give the clearest indication yet that the ICC sees the Ovalgate salvation resting with a game of pin the tail on the umpire and it is not a stretch to believe that they had a firm suspicion of the emails arrival before it actually came.

“Darrell survived that and has become a better umpire, he is one of the world’s best umpires, so I hope we can find a way for him to continue but I’m not sure that that will happen.”

In this game of high stakes chess, all it needed was for someone to make a bad move and Hair did that in a spectacular fashion.