AUSTRALIAN umpire Darrell Hair's fateful decision to award the 2006 Oval cricket Test between England and Pakistan to the home side has been endorsed by the game's law makers.

Hair's difficult call, made alongside West Indian umpire Billy Doctrove, was disowned by the International Cricket Council (ICC) following a meeting of its member nations in July this year, who decided to amend the result to a draw.

However the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), responsible for the laws of the game since they were first drawn up in 1788, concluded at a meeting of its world cricket committee in Delhi this week that the original result - a forfeit after Pakistan's players refused to return to the field after being accused of ball tampering by Hair - should stand.

The committee comprises a range of current and former international cricketers, including Steve Waugh, Shaun Pollock, Michael Atherton and Indian captain Anil Kumble.

At the end of their two-day meeting, chairman Tony Lewis declared the ICC had no power to change the result of the Oval Test.

"The ICC has no power under the laws of cricket to decide that results should be altered, whether it feels it 'inappropriate' or otherwise,'' Lewis said. "The ICC's decision is wrong and sets a very dangerous precedent. Cricket is the worse for this decision.''

Not long after the MCC's recommendation was announced, attention turned to Majid Khan, the former Pakistani captain, ex-match referee and erstwhile chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board. Majid said the committee's decision had been unanimous, for it was simply a matter of law.

"The rule states that you cant overturn a decision. The result should stay as is,'' he said. When asked what the reaction would be in Pakistan, Majid said "we'll wait and see''.

The original decision gave England victory and resulted in a suspension for Hair, who was reinstated after an employment tribunal hearing in October 2007.

Pakistan's then captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, now playing in the rebel Indian Cricket League, was banned for four one-day internationals for bringing the game into disrepute, but his team was cleared of the initial ball-tampering allegations.

The subsequent ICC ruling meant England won the four-match series 2-0 instead of 3-0, and caused former West Indian fastbowler Michael Holding to resign from the game's governing body in disgust.

Lewis said that in the realm of natural justice, the Oval match would always be a forfeit, regardless of what the ICC now chose to do. "As far as we're concerned there is no record of any other result (but a forfeit),'' he said.

"We're not reversing the ICC result, we're just saying they had no place to do that. We, MCC, wrote the rules in 1788 ... legally, there is absolutely no way the ICC can change the laws of the game, which it did do.''