FAIR DELIVERY ?

Among the presents I was fortunate to receive on my last birthday was a subscription to `The Cricketer` and I am thoroughly enjoying reading this splendid publication when it arrives on my doormat each month.   It is like it says on the front cover - a magazine for those like me who have spent a lifetime in love with what I consider to be the truly beautiful game.

But cricket has been going through a difficult time of late, as witnessed by the goings on at Yorkshire and the more general suspicion that racism might have extended to most parts of the county game, if not at the game`s highest level.

It`s now reported that the hitherto much admired editor of The Cricketer - former Middlesex bowler Simon Hughes - has been dismissed from the role after appearing to `take a soft line` on the issue of alleged racism.  He is understood to have upset fellow members of the staff at the magazine with his recent podcast comments about the issues at Yorkshire in which he compared the alleged use of the `P` word to being insulted by team mates for being bald during his own playing career.  This was followed by the predictable backlash on social media which in turn led to an internal review and which led to the decision not to renew Hughes`s contract.

He also caused a bit of a fuss last summer when he criticised the ECB`s decision to suspend Ollie Robinson from the England Test team after it emerged that Robinson had posted historic racist tweets in his days as an innocent youth, which Hughes described as a `total over reaction and a media lynching.`  

In what is now becoming a familiar tale, former England captain Michael Vaughan has been exiled by the BBC and BT Sports for the forthcoming Ashes tour as a result of racism allegations made against him despite his strong denial about the comments he made all of twelve years ago.  

Seems to me that what`s missing in cases such as this is `due process,` when allegations of this nature are made but where people are entitled to a fair hearing before any conclusions are drawn as to guilt or innocence, especially in cases going back a number of years when a different `culture` predominated.   Doesn`t necessarily make it right, of course, but it would help if things were considered in their proper context.   Instead we have rush to judgment, for which a former Lord High Chancellor, Thomas Erskine, said that there should be a solemn pause before being reached and in more modern times, John Grisham was convinced that the trouble with rushing to judgment is that it makes a fair trial hard to get.

In the cases of Hughes and Vaughan they may not be facing a fair delivery, the ball may have pitched outside off stump and gone on to miss the wickets - perhaps they should have called for a review?