MELBOURNE: Controversial former umpire Darrell Hair has claimed that many of the current officials suspect Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan's action but do not want to call him in matches for the fear of creating a furore.
Hair, who called Muralitharan for suspect action back in 1995, said many of the current umpires feel the same about the Lankan but prefer to turn a blind eye.
"A couple of current umpires have said to me, 'Something is wrong', but they prefer to let it go," Hair, who quit the ICC's elite panel in 2008, was quoted as saying by 'the Herald Sun'.
"There is still a lot of doubt about his deliveries. A few have told me, 'There is definitely something wrong with his action, but I'm not going to call him'. They are the ones who have to live with that," he revealed.
Hair said such an attitude of the umpires was unfair on the other teams.
"If you're an umpire you're meant to uphold the law so both teams get a fair shake. There's been some umpires who think, 'I'm on a good wicket here, I'm making good money, I won't rock the boat'," he said.
"It's not my style, it's obviously theirs."
Hair said he has been watching Muralitharan's bowling in the onging World Cup in the sub-continent and is not convinced about some of the deliveries he has bowled.
"I watched a few of his deliveries in his game against Pakistan and I noticed the last few overs when he was really getting some turn on the ball, those wouldn't have complied under scrutiny," Hair said.
"But this is his last World Cup, he's going to bow out with a lot of fanfare and no umpire will be bothered by it. Each time I wrote a list of concerns and put them in a report, but the report system wasn't working.
"The only way it would have worked was if the Sri Lanka board listened to it and quite patently they didn't want to. Back in 1995, I have no doubt he threw a hell of a lot of balls. He had his action reviewed, but then he started bowling the doosra and there's no one in the world who can bowl that legally," he added.