New York: The ball tampering controversy at the Oval Test has achieved something which even the World Cup and the Ashes failed to get -- front page treatment in American newspapers.
The fracas over Test cricket's first forfeit in 129-year cricket history echoed in the country, which is otherwise obsessed with basketball, baseball, ice hockey and American football.
'A Battle of National Pride, Fought on the Cricket Field' was how The New York Times described the situation arising from Pakistan not taking the field after being alleged to have tampered with the ball.
Correspondent Alan Cowell noted that Australian umpire Hair was known for contentious rulings against some Asian teams, adding that many Asian players regard him as "a difficult man to deal with."
The paper made its coverage comprehensive by quoting the views of several former cricketers, including Imran Khan and Angus Fraser, umpires and newspapers on the imbroglio.
Test cricket seldom gets mentioned in the US media, as Americans can't get over the fact a game can last five days, with breaks for 'tea', and end in a draw.
But the Oval incident struck a chord with American editors.
"An outsider - someone from the moon, say, or the United States -- might imagine that this was merely a folly of the silly season in a game followed only by erudite aficionados of leg-byes, googlies and silly-mid-ons, to mention but a few of crickets more esoteric terms," the NY Times wrote.
"But that is not what this conflict turned out to be."
Tuesday's Los Angeles Times ran the story on its front page, relegating a bomb blast in Moscow, Saddam Hussein's trial, the deaths of four US troops in Iraq and the West Asia conflict to its inside pages.
"When a match becomes a scandal, that's just not cricket," the paper's headline read.
The attention to the story given in US papers is all the more remarkable because the much-hyped Ashes series, which starts on November 23, is expected to hardly find a mention on the sports pages in American newspapers.
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