Cricket and controversy are old mates. Ever since Dougie Jardine clapped his hands and got Harry Larwood to ping the ball at the bonce of Aussie batsmen, players, captains and officials have bent, twisted or pushed the rules to try to gain an advantage. From Dennis Lillee’s aluminium bat to John Lever’s unorthodox use of Vaseline, the game has survived, and sometimes benefited from, the pushing of the boundaries.

Throughout all of the challenges, a number of things have stayed paramount. The spirit of the game is to be upheld, the game is played with honesty and the umpire is the final arbiter of everything that happens on the field. Or at least it was because the last decade has seen these foundation stones begin to crumble.

The spirit of cricket is not dead, but it is mortally wounded. Players now openly challenge umpiring decisions and on-field clashes between players are commonplace. Match fixing, drug-taking and a complete disregard for the integrity of the game is becoming the norm. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. The last Ashes series showed how two teams can play exceptional cricket and show all of the sportsmanship traditionally associated with the game. Sadly, series like that are becoming the exception, rather than the rule.

What is behind this degeneration in standards? Firstly, the ICC must stand front and centre to take the blame. Their lack of courage and conviction on a whole range of subjects has led to them being considered a laughing stock throughout the cricketing community. Their overly pragmatic approach to everything allows them to be bullied and intimidated into backing away from making a stand.

The power and financial clout of the South Asian bloc has had undue influence over the ICC board. There is no doubt that money talks, but it doesn’t always have good things to say. With the exception of Shane Warne’s fat pill, every major controversy of the last decade has had its roots in the sub-continent.

The match-fixing scandals, which started with Salim Malik offering Warney and Mark Waugh a brown bag full of cash to throw a game, started there. The paid pitch reports were funded by Indian bookies. The match-fixing charges that destroyed the careers of Malik, Ata-ur-Rehman, Mohammad Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Manoj Prabhakar and Hansie Cronje similarly so. The ICC can't even take a firm stand on this most fundamental of issues, having recently overturned the life ban imposed on Rehman.

The ICC’s capitulation and abandonment of the chucking rules were the result of a desperate need to keep Muttiah Muralitharan in the game. Despite their claims to the contrary, the ICC rule change, coming so soon after Murali was scientifically proven to be a chucker under the old rules, was as transparent as it was predictable.

The Pakistani cricket team is the home of ball tampering. Sure, others have given it a go, but no team has so consistently been accused, and convicted, of the practice as Pakistan. Even after the recent brouhaha at the Oval, Shoaib Akhtar was caught, on camera, running his thumbnail down the quarter seam of the ball less than a month later, making a mockery of the protestations of innocence and damage to national pride.

Now, for the first time in cricket history, two Pakistani players have been caught using performance-enhancing drugs. The PCB have handed out suspensions to Shoaib and Asif but, in the case of the latter, ignored the WADA regulations to which they are signatories. The argument that the tests were an internal matter holds no water, but the ICC stands in silence on the matter, deferring to the local authorities’ judgement. Again, when a strong stand is need, the ICC is nowhere to be found.

That these things are happening is not the disturbing thing; it is the ICC’s policy of appeasement that we should worry about. What began with the move away from Lord’s to show that the ICC was not overly influenced by the MCC, has become a bend-over-backwards routine to please the controlling bodies from this region. Again, the ICC's lack of direct action to stamp out these issues is to blame, not the BCCI or the PCB. The local boards, quite rightly, have their own interests to promote; it is not for them to keep an eye on the big picture. A strong, independent ICC is essential to safeguard the game.

The latest, and most disturbing, example of the ICC's spineless behaviour is the disgraceful handling of the forfeited Oval test. Rather than make a stand in support of their umpires, they seemingly manipulated the hearings to ensure that they got the referee, and hence the verdict, of their choice, in effect leaving the umpire out on a limb.

Could Darrell Hair have handled things differently? Sure, but at the end of the day he was only responding to events as they unfolded. Even if we assume that the ball-tampering call was wrong, it is incumbent on all players to accept the umpires’ verdict. Human error is an integral part of the game and everyone who has played for any length of time will be on the wrong end of a bad decision.

The sacking of Hair for his part in this shameful episode is a travesty. Inzamam got the minimum possible penalty for the first forfeit in Test cricket history; Hair gets sacked. Where’s the equity in that? Hair’s only crime, as far as one can tell, was upholding the laws of the game - the very thing that he was there to do. Umpires of integrity and ability are too rare a commodity to be wasted on political stunts like this. The game is too full of clowns like Billy Bowden, desperate to become part of the game, not just stand in judgement of it.

Malcolm Speed and the ICC board have now guaranteed that no umpire will ever make a difficult decision again. That's one way to avoid controversy, and it may be what they wanted to achieve, but the game will be poorer for it and the game will be much poorer for the loss of Darrell Hair. To sum up, it’s simply not cricket.