It's Not Just Cricket

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LUKE MACGREGOR / REUTERS

FOUL BALL: Umpires Doctrove, left, and Hair show the allegedly tampered ball to Pakistan's captain Inzamam

Watching the fiasco unfold during last week's cricket match between England and Pakistan, it was possible to see how wars start. The setting may have been the sunlit Brit Oval in London, but the atmosphere resembled the slow, inevitable spiral of tensions leading up to international conflict. On the fourth day of a five-day Test match last week, umpire Darrell Hair ruled that the Pakistan team had illegally tampered with the cricket ball. The Pakistan team professed its innocence, but Hair, in consultation with his fellow umpire Billy Doctrove, penalized the team and ordered the ball to be changed. After stewing...