Murali Chucking or NOT ?
- Thread starter madmattg
- Start date
He's the only spin bowler to flex his arm that much. I dont understand why he is still bowling. Cheats shouldn't be allowed in the game for so long. I hope murali doesn't go to australia, if he does i hope the crowd, yell "no ball" after every delivery.
m_vaughan
Chairman of Selectors
I think at the most you can ban him from taking part in furthur matches. As taking away his wickets is simply not possible, as that would disrupt the data of the various matches he was involved in.
However I dont think Murali is the only one who chucks. His doosra might be a bit too much, but there are several other bowlers, who too have pretty suspicious bowling actions.
Shoaib Akhtar
Shabbir Ahmed
Harbhajan Singh (he has a delivery which is similar to the doosra, and I would like to see his action checked for that particular delivery)
Jermaine Lawson
However I dont think Murali is the only one who chucks. His doosra might be a bit too much, but there are several other bowlers, who too have pretty suspicious bowling actions.
Shoaib Akhtar
Shabbir Ahmed
Harbhajan Singh (he has a delivery which is similar to the doosra, and I would like to see his action checked for that particular delivery)
Jermaine Lawson
m_vaughan
Chairman of Selectors
yes Shabbir's action seems okay now....seemed okay in the recent pak-ind series atleast. am not that sure about shoaib akhtar. he is a great bowler no doubt, but rules are rules, and you arent allowed to break 'em.
Hondo
Club Cricketer
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2004
- Online Cricket Games Owned
Prime stupidity
Christian Ryan
June 16, 2004
John Howard: If ever a prime minister might have stayed tactfully silent it was upon being questioned about Murali's bowling action? Getty Images
Sir Robert Menzies, among his many good turns for Australian cricket through the 1950s and 60s, once paid for a young Keith Stackpole to receive legspin coaching from Clarrie Grimmett. John Howard's one and only contribution has been to put paid to any hope of Muttiah Muralitharan touring Australia. Eight of the lamest, laziest, least considered words uttered by any prime minister on any sport - "they proved it in Perth with that thing" - will go down as Howard's cricketing legacy.
If ever a prime minister might have involved himself in cricket it was two months ago, when he could have dug administrators out of a hole by insisting that no Australian side would play against a Zimbabwe XI selected on the basis of skin colour. Instead Howard maintained he didn't "want to tell Cricket Australia what to do".
If ever a prime minister might have stayed tactfully silent it was upon being questioned about Murali's bowling action, a topic which has fans, Test legends and biomechanical boffins alike deeply divided. Instead Howard opened his big mouth.
The gut instinct among many Australians is to think Murali is a sook for not coming. But we should imagine ourselves in his shoes.
Melbourne is the city where an umpire first calls you for throwing. Adelaide is where, just when you think life's gone back to normal, it happens again. Perth is the place you journey every couple of winters to prove you're not a dirty rotten cheat. Brisbane is where Darren Lehmann bellows "black c---s" after you and your mates run him out one night. Everywhere blokes with beerguts stick their flabby right arms out horizontally and holler "no-ball" just as you're about to let the thing go.
And then the boss of the country, with waving arms and smiling eyes, tells a bunch of suits at a party luncheon that he reckons you're a chucker. Let's face reality. Australia has not gone out of its way to make this man welcome.
Murali's minders say his decision to stay home is about all these things, and not just John Howard. But there is no doubting the instant when his resolve hardened. As Murali himself put it the day after Howard's intervention: "I thought of coming to Australia but now I will think three times before I come."
Back home, Howard's words were seen for what they were: a politician shooting his mouth off on a subject he knew little about. It was unfortunate but, ultimately, a bit of a giggle.
Around the rest of the cricket-playing world his comments were viewed through a racist prism. This was as unavoidable as it was unfair. After all, he is a prime minister best known internationally for turning away boatloads of asylum seekers and refusing to say sorry to generations of Aboriginal children stolen from their families. A month before volunteering his inexpert opinion on Murali, Howard abolished ATSIC - the democratically elected Aboriginal body - without bothering to consult anyone or come up with a suitable alternative. It is no wonder if Murali now feels he had little alternative.
Muttiah Muralitharan: Whether he chucks or not is irrelevant because most Australian cricket followers would love to see him out here? AFP
The buck doesn't stop with Howard either. Cricket and race have a shabby track record round these parts, even if you leave aside Lehmann's lapse and Jimmy Maher's regrettably sozzled confession - "I'm as full as a coon's Valiant" - on national TV a decade ago.
Jason Gillespie is the first and last Test cricketer with Aboriginal roots. Players from Asia and the subcontinent haven't had much of a look-in either. Tot up every Aboriginal first-class player in the past 153 years and you're left just shy of a 1st XI, never mind a whole squad. Gillespie and Mike Hussey are spending this weekend tutoring indigenous cricketers on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, then taking part in a match between the kids and adults. This is fabulous news. It is also unprecedented, and therefore several decades overdue.
Now Murali is staying home and we're all losers. Menzies, Howard's great spiritual mentor, might be feeling a little ashamed if he was still alive. The tour, minus Murali and maybe Shane Warne too, promises to be yet another excruciating mis-advertisement for midwinter Test matches. Murali, meanwhile, has to sit back and put up with the great Dennis Lillee branding him "pathetic". It is an ugly hour.
The sad thing is most Australian cricket followers would love to see him out here. Whether he chucks or not - and the verdict round the pubs of the land is still decidedly mixed - is irrelevant. The people intrigued and interested in watching Murali bowl are many; the yobbos who heckle and call him names are few. Yet it's hard to escape the feeling that when future historians study the curious, unhappy relationship between Australia and the world's greatest wicket-taker, we are the ones who will be called names.
Christian Ryan
June 16, 2004
John Howard: If ever a prime minister might have stayed tactfully silent it was upon being questioned about Murali's bowling action? Getty Images
Sir Robert Menzies, among his many good turns for Australian cricket through the 1950s and 60s, once paid for a young Keith Stackpole to receive legspin coaching from Clarrie Grimmett. John Howard's one and only contribution has been to put paid to any hope of Muttiah Muralitharan touring Australia. Eight of the lamest, laziest, least considered words uttered by any prime minister on any sport - "they proved it in Perth with that thing" - will go down as Howard's cricketing legacy.
If ever a prime minister might have involved himself in cricket it was two months ago, when he could have dug administrators out of a hole by insisting that no Australian side would play against a Zimbabwe XI selected on the basis of skin colour. Instead Howard maintained he didn't "want to tell Cricket Australia what to do".
If ever a prime minister might have stayed tactfully silent it was upon being questioned about Murali's bowling action, a topic which has fans, Test legends and biomechanical boffins alike deeply divided. Instead Howard opened his big mouth.
The gut instinct among many Australians is to think Murali is a sook for not coming. But we should imagine ourselves in his shoes.
Melbourne is the city where an umpire first calls you for throwing. Adelaide is where, just when you think life's gone back to normal, it happens again. Perth is the place you journey every couple of winters to prove you're not a dirty rotten cheat. Brisbane is where Darren Lehmann bellows "black c---s" after you and your mates run him out one night. Everywhere blokes with beerguts stick their flabby right arms out horizontally and holler "no-ball" just as you're about to let the thing go.
And then the boss of the country, with waving arms and smiling eyes, tells a bunch of suits at a party luncheon that he reckons you're a chucker. Let's face reality. Australia has not gone out of its way to make this man welcome.
Murali's minders say his decision to stay home is about all these things, and not just John Howard. But there is no doubting the instant when his resolve hardened. As Murali himself put it the day after Howard's intervention: "I thought of coming to Australia but now I will think three times before I come."
Back home, Howard's words were seen for what they were: a politician shooting his mouth off on a subject he knew little about. It was unfortunate but, ultimately, a bit of a giggle.
Around the rest of the cricket-playing world his comments were viewed through a racist prism. This was as unavoidable as it was unfair. After all, he is a prime minister best known internationally for turning away boatloads of asylum seekers and refusing to say sorry to generations of Aboriginal children stolen from their families. A month before volunteering his inexpert opinion on Murali, Howard abolished ATSIC - the democratically elected Aboriginal body - without bothering to consult anyone or come up with a suitable alternative. It is no wonder if Murali now feels he had little alternative.
Muttiah Muralitharan: Whether he chucks or not is irrelevant because most Australian cricket followers would love to see him out here? AFP
The buck doesn't stop with Howard either. Cricket and race have a shabby track record round these parts, even if you leave aside Lehmann's lapse and Jimmy Maher's regrettably sozzled confession - "I'm as full as a coon's Valiant" - on national TV a decade ago.
Jason Gillespie is the first and last Test cricketer with Aboriginal roots. Players from Asia and the subcontinent haven't had much of a look-in either. Tot up every Aboriginal first-class player in the past 153 years and you're left just shy of a 1st XI, never mind a whole squad. Gillespie and Mike Hussey are spending this weekend tutoring indigenous cricketers on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, then taking part in a match between the kids and adults. This is fabulous news. It is also unprecedented, and therefore several decades overdue.
Now Murali is staying home and we're all losers. Menzies, Howard's great spiritual mentor, might be feeling a little ashamed if he was still alive. The tour, minus Murali and maybe Shane Warne too, promises to be yet another excruciating mis-advertisement for midwinter Test matches. Murali, meanwhile, has to sit back and put up with the great Dennis Lillee branding him "pathetic". It is an ugly hour.
The sad thing is most Australian cricket followers would love to see him out here. Whether he chucks or not - and the verdict round the pubs of the land is still decidedly mixed - is irrelevant. The people intrigued and interested in watching Murali bowl are many; the yobbos who heckle and call him names are few. Yet it's hard to escape the feeling that when future historians study the curious, unhappy relationship between Australia and the world's greatest wicket-taker, we are the ones who will be called names.
Hondo
Club Cricketer
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2004
- Online Cricket Games Owned
Degrees of guilt
Mukul Kesavan looks at why the ICC's present system of variable tolerance limits based on bowlers' speeds is untenable and unenforceable and suggests an alternative. This piece appeared as the cover story in the June issue of Wisden Asia Cricket.
For those of you who thought that the laws of cricket require bowlers to bowl, not throw, you should know that the ICC allows all bowlers to chuck, i.e. to straighten their arms at the point of delivery. But not all ICC-sanctioned chuckers are created equal. In a sign of the growing clout of India in international cricket, bowlers have been classified into a kind of Hindu hierarchy, a caste system where status is based on the sacred principle of speed. Thus, a fast bowler can straighten his arm through 10 degrees (that is, crook his arm and chuck from that angle), a medium-pacer through 7.5 degrees (don't you love the specious exactness of that decimal point?) and a slow bowler, or spinner, is allowed the smallest cheat of all, a mere 5 degrees.
According to Wisden Cricinfo, "Tolerance levels were recently introduced by the ICC ? although not into the Laws of Cricket ? because research into fast bowling indicated that some degree of elbow straightening was identified in 99% of cases. The natural elbow flexion spanned from 3 to 20 degrees." What this means in plain language is that the immutable laws of cricket carry on being immutable, but the men in charge of implementing them are instructed to ignore bowlers who chuck within some theoretical limits. How might an umpire measure the degree of crookedness on the pitch, short of peering through a protractor? And how, therefore, are the 'tolerance limits' to be enforced? Recent events have supplied us with a possible answer.
After Chris Broad reported Muttiah Muralitharan to the ICC because he thought his doosra was dodgy (or dodgier than his other deliveries), Murali was wired and measured by boffins in Australia. The subsequent report tells us that Murali seems to flex his arm through 14 degrees while bowling the doosra, which is nearly three times the chucking allowance for a spinner. After corrective coaching, according to extracts from the reports published in The Hindu, the degree of flexion was brought down to 10 degrees, still twice the permitted limit of tolerance for spinners. Despite this, the report recommends that he be allowed to bowl the doosra pending further investigations and research. Which leaves matters as clear as mud.
The ICC has decided to ignore the scientists' recommendations. It has banned the doosra and put Murali on notice by making it clear that if he is called for bowling the doosra again he could be banned from international cricket for up to 12 months. "These current levels of tolerance are based on expert advice that suggests that, beyond a certain level, bowlers will gain an unfair advantage," Malcolm Speed, the ICC's chief executive, said in a statement, explaining the ICC's position.
Bizarrely, the expert, Bruce Elliott, who was approved by the ICC to do the tests on Murali's doosra, has, according to Wisden Cricinfo, strongly criticised the current tolerance limits, which he claims are based on "illogical data"! Wisden Cricinfo reports him saying that, " ... the five-degrees [rule] is based on illogical data because they've just tested fast bowlers and assumed that there is some relationship between fast bowlers and spin bowlers. Fifteen degrees is the right angle to select for fast bowlers and you probably should come down to 10 degrees for spin bowlers."
Another member of the team that worked with Murali, Daryl Foster of the University of Western Australia's School of Human Movement and Exercise Science, also questions the rationale behind the discriminatory tolerance limits in his report on Murali's action. On what information, studies or research, he asks, are the ICC tolerance figures of 10 degrees, 7.5 degrees and 5 degrees for bowlers ranging from fast to spin, based? "Without knowing what the situation is with other spin bowlers," he says, "it would seem unrealistic to ban Murali's doosra without the benefit of proper research having been undertaken into 'normal' spin bowlers." I'm not sure where that leaves Mr Speed or the ICC. Paddle-less, I think.
This is a pivotal moment in the history of cricket and it is important that no one, neither Murali nor anyone else, be punished or proceeded against till the ICC rethinks its `tolerance limits' because in their present form they are inconsistent, discriminatory and unenforceable.
They are inconsistent with the basic object of the law against throwing. The law against straightening the arm at the point of delivery is meant to discourage the unfair advantage in speed, bounce and turn that such flexion gives a cheating bowler over his honest, straight-armed contemporary. So if bending and straightening their arms allows Brett Lee or Shoaib Akhtar to bowl faster, given the laws of cricket, the ICC should instruct them to bowl with straighter arms, even if this means they bowl less rapidly. Instead the ICC has taken the view that the faster you bowl, the more flagrantly you can chuck. Why should an honest, straight-armed trier like Javagal Srinath end a career with poorer stats than, say, Shoaib Akhtar, simply because he took cricket's laws seriously?
The workhorse medium-pacer is only allowed a 7.5% ceiling of crookedness: did the ICC stop to think that the reason he's bowling slower is because his action conforms more closely to the definition of a legitimate delivery? And conversely, did they consider the possibility that the reason why Brett Lee and Akhtar terrorise batsmen with pace and bounce is that their bowling actions depart more radically from the prescriptions of the Laws of Cricket? Cricket cannot discriminate between fast bowlers and slower ones without standing the letter and spirit of its own law on its head.
I have thought for some time now that the bounce Glenn McGrath extracts from just short of a good length owes something to a straightening arm and I was delighted to find support for this view in a recent article by Simon Hughes in The Daily Telegraph. Here's the quote: "[Courtney] Walsh was never called for chucking and neither was Glenn McGrath. Yet McGrath gets some of his pace from a hyperextension of the elbow which varies in extent [emphasis added]. Shoaib Akhtar is a similar case. In fact most fast bowlers flex their elbow slightly at some point in delivery. I would go so far as to say virtually all of them inadvertently 'throw' the odd ball. If Law 24.3 was applied ultra-rigorously, there would not be many fast bowlers still playing."
Oddly enough, McGrath is regarded as the exemplary fast bowler, Akhtar and Lee are hailed for injecting excitement into the modern game, while the wretched Muralitharan is reviled around the world by Australian umpires, Indian spinners (retired), Michael Parkinson, and now Chris Broad. Why?
In the recent past, cricket's administrators and commentators have developed a 'conservationist' policy towards fast bowling. I remember hearing the otherwise sensible Ian Chappell say during India's last tour but one of Australia that he hoped umpires weren't too severe on the likes of Lee and Akhtar because they brought so much to the game. Almost as if the ICC had been listening, this view has been enshrined in these absurd 'tolerance limits'. In an earlier time men like Charlie Griffith and Ian Meckiff had their careers ruthlessly cut short once they were called. The reason for the difference between then and now is straightforward: before the introduction of the helmet, fast bowlers who chucked were life-threatening; now, pace Chappell, we are free to see them as a source of cricketing sex-appeal and excitement.
But even if we were to go along with this decadent, later-Roman point of view, we need to be consistent. Murali brings as much to the cricketing table as McGrath or Akhtar or Lee. He is the most destructive spinner in the history of cricket, bar no-one, not even Warne. He turns the ball a yard into the batsman, then turns it away at will with his doosra, the most amazing delivery since Bosanquet invented the googly. What perverse logic allows Akhtar to bend his arm through 10 degrees and stay legal while the same degree of flexion in the case of Murali brings him to the attention of Broad's beady eye?
Murali can either be embraced as part of a general redefinition of the legal delivery, or, if the ICC chooses to enforce Law 24.3 strictly, he can be excommunicated along with the epidemic of crooked-arm artists who have taken over the contemporary game. What the ICC can't do, is to make Murali pull over while allowing Lee and Akhtar the run of the fast lane.
Instead of making Murali the lightning rod for the controversy over chucking, why not test all contemporary bowlers who represent their countries in Tests or one-dayers and publish the degree to which they straighten their arms? Should such a study reveal that the likes of Lee and Akhtar and Harbhajan Singh are chronic arm-straighteners, there will be enough boards with a dog in the fight for the ICC to have a 'robust' debate about the tolerance limits as they are presently framed. Cricket will avoid the spectacle of one bowler being hounded on account of his success and we might actually get a principled discussion on what is an epidemic of illegality.
If indeed most fast bowlers chuck, and if the ICC doesn't want to rigorously enforce its own laws because this might render them extinct and make cricket's theme park less attractive, then the only durable solution is to change Law 24.3 for all bowlers, not just express chuckers. The laws of cricket don't (and shouldn't) lay down that speed is more significant in the matter of defining a legal delivery than swing or bounce or spin. The law seeks to lay down a general and universal rule for a legitimate delivery. If the ICC now feels that 10-degree flexion is permissible within this definition, then this should apply to all bowlers so that all of them, slow, medium and fast can exploit the possibilities of chucking equally. Daryl Foster who worked with Murali to reduce the illegal flexion he used while bowling the doosra, suggests exactly this in his remediation report:
"It may be that 15 degrees of extension be allowed to all types of bowlers no matter what speed they bowl at, beyond which it will be termed an illegal delivery."
The working assumption behind the graded 'tolerance limits' seems to be that the arm straightening that occurs within those limits is involuntary, and that because of the biomechanics of bowling fast, the sins of fast bowlers are more involuntary than those of others. This is a dangerous assumption because it takes us into the murky terrain of intention (did the bowler mean to chuck?) and the uncertain authority of a fledgling science.
In his replies to a series of questions put to him on the rationale behind the tolerance limits, David Richardson, speaking on behalf of the ICC, says repeatedly that the tolerance limits had been put into place not to accommodate fast bowlers who straightened their arms, but to acknowledge the biomechanical realities of bowling fast. "The levels of tolerance are set so as to accommodate a degree of straightening which might occur due to the stresses placed on the body during the delivery. Even a solid metal bar, if rotated fast enough will display a degree of movement." The metal bar analogy is meant to be the scientific clincher: if natural laws of motion can bend rigid, inanimate materials, the living tissue that makes up the human arm must be susceptible to them.
The problem is, metal bars don't often have elbow joints. All other things being equal, all metal bars will flex to exactly the same degree when rotated at a given speed. The same isn't true of human arms. Here, the degree of flexion will depend on individual arms: some will be double- jointed, some thick and muscular, others thin and sinewy: by definition, other things cannot be equal. The ICC's own evidence indicates that even among fast bowlers who haven't been 'called' or reported for unfair actions, some flex their arms through nine degrees and others not at all. If there's even one fast bowler who doesn't flex his arm, arm-straightening, arguably, becomes a choice, not the inevitable result of a scientific law. So why not make the zero-degree men the norm? Why be permissive and offer the latitude of 10 degrees?
"Good question," replies Richardson, "but you have to draw the line somewhere. The bottomline is that in the case of fast bowlers, anything under 10 would not be noticeable to the naked eye."
Really? Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar have both been reported for dodgy actions earlier in their careers and cleared. They have been bowling fast with impunity for a while. Does this mean that they currently flex their arms less than 10 degrees? If they do, then Richardson's claim that sub-10-degree flexion is invisible can't be right because the kink in their actions is clearly visible to the naked eye ? to nearly every spectator who has ever watched them bowl. And if they do flex their arms more than 10 degrees, why haven't they been reported again? Have they been tested since the tolerance limits came into effect? If the ICC is already in the business of commissioning scientific studies to frame bowling guidelines, there's no reason for them to wait till an international bowler is reported.
Mukul Kesavan looks at why the ICC's present system of variable tolerance limits based on bowlers' speeds is untenable and unenforceable and suggests an alternative. This piece appeared as the cover story in the June issue of Wisden Asia Cricket.
For those of you who thought that the laws of cricket require bowlers to bowl, not throw, you should know that the ICC allows all bowlers to chuck, i.e. to straighten their arms at the point of delivery. But not all ICC-sanctioned chuckers are created equal. In a sign of the growing clout of India in international cricket, bowlers have been classified into a kind of Hindu hierarchy, a caste system where status is based on the sacred principle of speed. Thus, a fast bowler can straighten his arm through 10 degrees (that is, crook his arm and chuck from that angle), a medium-pacer through 7.5 degrees (don't you love the specious exactness of that decimal point?) and a slow bowler, or spinner, is allowed the smallest cheat of all, a mere 5 degrees.
According to Wisden Cricinfo, "Tolerance levels were recently introduced by the ICC ? although not into the Laws of Cricket ? because research into fast bowling indicated that some degree of elbow straightening was identified in 99% of cases. The natural elbow flexion spanned from 3 to 20 degrees." What this means in plain language is that the immutable laws of cricket carry on being immutable, but the men in charge of implementing them are instructed to ignore bowlers who chuck within some theoretical limits. How might an umpire measure the degree of crookedness on the pitch, short of peering through a protractor? And how, therefore, are the 'tolerance limits' to be enforced? Recent events have supplied us with a possible answer.
After Chris Broad reported Muttiah Muralitharan to the ICC because he thought his doosra was dodgy (or dodgier than his other deliveries), Murali was wired and measured by boffins in Australia. The subsequent report tells us that Murali seems to flex his arm through 14 degrees while bowling the doosra, which is nearly three times the chucking allowance for a spinner. After corrective coaching, according to extracts from the reports published in The Hindu, the degree of flexion was brought down to 10 degrees, still twice the permitted limit of tolerance for spinners. Despite this, the report recommends that he be allowed to bowl the doosra pending further investigations and research. Which leaves matters as clear as mud.
The ICC has decided to ignore the scientists' recommendations. It has banned the doosra and put Murali on notice by making it clear that if he is called for bowling the doosra again he could be banned from international cricket for up to 12 months. "These current levels of tolerance are based on expert advice that suggests that, beyond a certain level, bowlers will gain an unfair advantage," Malcolm Speed, the ICC's chief executive, said in a statement, explaining the ICC's position.
Bizarrely, the expert, Bruce Elliott, who was approved by the ICC to do the tests on Murali's doosra, has, according to Wisden Cricinfo, strongly criticised the current tolerance limits, which he claims are based on "illogical data"! Wisden Cricinfo reports him saying that, " ... the five-degrees [rule] is based on illogical data because they've just tested fast bowlers and assumed that there is some relationship between fast bowlers and spin bowlers. Fifteen degrees is the right angle to select for fast bowlers and you probably should come down to 10 degrees for spin bowlers."
Another member of the team that worked with Murali, Daryl Foster of the University of Western Australia's School of Human Movement and Exercise Science, also questions the rationale behind the discriminatory tolerance limits in his report on Murali's action. On what information, studies or research, he asks, are the ICC tolerance figures of 10 degrees, 7.5 degrees and 5 degrees for bowlers ranging from fast to spin, based? "Without knowing what the situation is with other spin bowlers," he says, "it would seem unrealistic to ban Murali's doosra without the benefit of proper research having been undertaken into 'normal' spin bowlers." I'm not sure where that leaves Mr Speed or the ICC. Paddle-less, I think.
This is a pivotal moment in the history of cricket and it is important that no one, neither Murali nor anyone else, be punished or proceeded against till the ICC rethinks its `tolerance limits' because in their present form they are inconsistent, discriminatory and unenforceable.
They are inconsistent with the basic object of the law against throwing. The law against straightening the arm at the point of delivery is meant to discourage the unfair advantage in speed, bounce and turn that such flexion gives a cheating bowler over his honest, straight-armed contemporary. So if bending and straightening their arms allows Brett Lee or Shoaib Akhtar to bowl faster, given the laws of cricket, the ICC should instruct them to bowl with straighter arms, even if this means they bowl less rapidly. Instead the ICC has taken the view that the faster you bowl, the more flagrantly you can chuck. Why should an honest, straight-armed trier like Javagal Srinath end a career with poorer stats than, say, Shoaib Akhtar, simply because he took cricket's laws seriously?
The workhorse medium-pacer is only allowed a 7.5% ceiling of crookedness: did the ICC stop to think that the reason he's bowling slower is because his action conforms more closely to the definition of a legitimate delivery? And conversely, did they consider the possibility that the reason why Brett Lee and Akhtar terrorise batsmen with pace and bounce is that their bowling actions depart more radically from the prescriptions of the Laws of Cricket? Cricket cannot discriminate between fast bowlers and slower ones without standing the letter and spirit of its own law on its head.
I have thought for some time now that the bounce Glenn McGrath extracts from just short of a good length owes something to a straightening arm and I was delighted to find support for this view in a recent article by Simon Hughes in The Daily Telegraph. Here's the quote: "[Courtney] Walsh was never called for chucking and neither was Glenn McGrath. Yet McGrath gets some of his pace from a hyperextension of the elbow which varies in extent [emphasis added]. Shoaib Akhtar is a similar case. In fact most fast bowlers flex their elbow slightly at some point in delivery. I would go so far as to say virtually all of them inadvertently 'throw' the odd ball. If Law 24.3 was applied ultra-rigorously, there would not be many fast bowlers still playing."
Oddly enough, McGrath is regarded as the exemplary fast bowler, Akhtar and Lee are hailed for injecting excitement into the modern game, while the wretched Muralitharan is reviled around the world by Australian umpires, Indian spinners (retired), Michael Parkinson, and now Chris Broad. Why?
In the recent past, cricket's administrators and commentators have developed a 'conservationist' policy towards fast bowling. I remember hearing the otherwise sensible Ian Chappell say during India's last tour but one of Australia that he hoped umpires weren't too severe on the likes of Lee and Akhtar because they brought so much to the game. Almost as if the ICC had been listening, this view has been enshrined in these absurd 'tolerance limits'. In an earlier time men like Charlie Griffith and Ian Meckiff had their careers ruthlessly cut short once they were called. The reason for the difference between then and now is straightforward: before the introduction of the helmet, fast bowlers who chucked were life-threatening; now, pace Chappell, we are free to see them as a source of cricketing sex-appeal and excitement.
But even if we were to go along with this decadent, later-Roman point of view, we need to be consistent. Murali brings as much to the cricketing table as McGrath or Akhtar or Lee. He is the most destructive spinner in the history of cricket, bar no-one, not even Warne. He turns the ball a yard into the batsman, then turns it away at will with his doosra, the most amazing delivery since Bosanquet invented the googly. What perverse logic allows Akhtar to bend his arm through 10 degrees and stay legal while the same degree of flexion in the case of Murali brings him to the attention of Broad's beady eye?
Murali can either be embraced as part of a general redefinition of the legal delivery, or, if the ICC chooses to enforce Law 24.3 strictly, he can be excommunicated along with the epidemic of crooked-arm artists who have taken over the contemporary game. What the ICC can't do, is to make Murali pull over while allowing Lee and Akhtar the run of the fast lane.
Instead of making Murali the lightning rod for the controversy over chucking, why not test all contemporary bowlers who represent their countries in Tests or one-dayers and publish the degree to which they straighten their arms? Should such a study reveal that the likes of Lee and Akhtar and Harbhajan Singh are chronic arm-straighteners, there will be enough boards with a dog in the fight for the ICC to have a 'robust' debate about the tolerance limits as they are presently framed. Cricket will avoid the spectacle of one bowler being hounded on account of his success and we might actually get a principled discussion on what is an epidemic of illegality.
If indeed most fast bowlers chuck, and if the ICC doesn't want to rigorously enforce its own laws because this might render them extinct and make cricket's theme park less attractive, then the only durable solution is to change Law 24.3 for all bowlers, not just express chuckers. The laws of cricket don't (and shouldn't) lay down that speed is more significant in the matter of defining a legal delivery than swing or bounce or spin. The law seeks to lay down a general and universal rule for a legitimate delivery. If the ICC now feels that 10-degree flexion is permissible within this definition, then this should apply to all bowlers so that all of them, slow, medium and fast can exploit the possibilities of chucking equally. Daryl Foster who worked with Murali to reduce the illegal flexion he used while bowling the doosra, suggests exactly this in his remediation report:
"It may be that 15 degrees of extension be allowed to all types of bowlers no matter what speed they bowl at, beyond which it will be termed an illegal delivery."
The working assumption behind the graded 'tolerance limits' seems to be that the arm straightening that occurs within those limits is involuntary, and that because of the biomechanics of bowling fast, the sins of fast bowlers are more involuntary than those of others. This is a dangerous assumption because it takes us into the murky terrain of intention (did the bowler mean to chuck?) and the uncertain authority of a fledgling science.
In his replies to a series of questions put to him on the rationale behind the tolerance limits, David Richardson, speaking on behalf of the ICC, says repeatedly that the tolerance limits had been put into place not to accommodate fast bowlers who straightened their arms, but to acknowledge the biomechanical realities of bowling fast. "The levels of tolerance are set so as to accommodate a degree of straightening which might occur due to the stresses placed on the body during the delivery. Even a solid metal bar, if rotated fast enough will display a degree of movement." The metal bar analogy is meant to be the scientific clincher: if natural laws of motion can bend rigid, inanimate materials, the living tissue that makes up the human arm must be susceptible to them.
The problem is, metal bars don't often have elbow joints. All other things being equal, all metal bars will flex to exactly the same degree when rotated at a given speed. The same isn't true of human arms. Here, the degree of flexion will depend on individual arms: some will be double- jointed, some thick and muscular, others thin and sinewy: by definition, other things cannot be equal. The ICC's own evidence indicates that even among fast bowlers who haven't been 'called' or reported for unfair actions, some flex their arms through nine degrees and others not at all. If there's even one fast bowler who doesn't flex his arm, arm-straightening, arguably, becomes a choice, not the inevitable result of a scientific law. So why not make the zero-degree men the norm? Why be permissive and offer the latitude of 10 degrees?
"Good question," replies Richardson, "but you have to draw the line somewhere. The bottomline is that in the case of fast bowlers, anything under 10 would not be noticeable to the naked eye."
Really? Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar have both been reported for dodgy actions earlier in their careers and cleared. They have been bowling fast with impunity for a while. Does this mean that they currently flex their arms less than 10 degrees? If they do, then Richardson's claim that sub-10-degree flexion is invisible can't be right because the kink in their actions is clearly visible to the naked eye ? to nearly every spectator who has ever watched them bowl. And if they do flex their arms more than 10 degrees, why haven't they been reported again? Have they been tested since the tolerance limits came into effect? If the ICC is already in the business of commissioning scientific studies to frame bowling guidelines, there's no reason for them to wait till an international bowler is reported.
Hondo
Club Cricketer
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2004
- Online Cricket Games Owned
Science isn't going to provide self-evident answers. The research shows that some fast bowlers can bowl without flexion while others straighten their arms. Science doesn't speak with one voice in the matter of spinners either. According to Richardson, the ICC's study "showed that the stress or forces on the body of the spinner were not sufficient to warrant any degree of straightening." Diametrically opposed to this finding is the expert opinion of Daryl Foster as reported in The Hindu:
"We contend that because the speed of his (Muralitharan's) upper-arm rotation is as fast, and in some cases quicker than, fast bowlers, his level of acceptability for elbow extension should also be set at the 10-degree mark."
The ICC needs to understand that it can't apply to science for warrants to enforce discriminatory laws. The laws of cricket, like other human laws, can't lay claim to the ultimate truth; but they must aspire to fairness. Good laws have two prime qualities: they are uniform and they are enforceable. ICC's tolerance limits meet neither criterion.
In India, for historical reasons, Muslims are governed by a separate personal law which, among other things, allows Muslim men to marry upto four women concurrently. Indians of other communities ? Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and so on ? are legally monogamous. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Muslim Personal Law, it has created in Indian politics endless controversy and grievance, real and imagined.
For cricket to create the equivalent of a Muslim personal law for fast bowlers ? "I'm allowed 10 degrees to your five" ? when the traditions of the game don't mandate such differentiation, is mad. Fortunately the law itself hasn't yet been changed, the statutes of our game don't formally recognise this sectarian distinction, and there is time for the ICC to take on board some heartfelt Indian advice: don't go there.
If the ICC intends to abide by the letter and spirit of the original law, there is an alternative course. The council should declare that it is willing to bend the law fractionally to accommodate research that shows that large numbers of bowlers find it difficult to bowl without straightening their arms. It should nominate a three-, four- or five-degree limit, a single-digit figure that is derived from the low end of research findings. Notice that the sentence doesn't read "bowl fast without straightening", but simply, "bowl without straightening".
The ICC should demand that every bowler come in at or under this minimum deviation from the straight-arm norm. It should make it clear that as the apex body of the game its main concern is with making all bowlers conform to the law rather than with stretching the law to fit some bowlers. Any fast bowlers who find it impossible to bowl at 98 mph without exceeding the three-degree cutoff will be welcome to decelerate till their bowling arcs fit the ICC template. Any spinners whose doosras (or for that matter, their 'pehlas') require a suspension of disbelief greater than three degrees (or four, or five, so long as the limit is low and general to all bowling species) will be sentenced to long hours in solitary watching videos of Bishen Bedi in his delivery stride from every angle that the archives can supply.
If the scientists are to be believed, many bowlers won't make the cut, but the integrity of cricket was never going to come cheap. Should the ICC not have the stomach for the uproar that will follow, it can go the more permissive route and peg the tolerance limit at 10 degrees for everyone. It will change bowling as we know it by encouraging the Lees, Akhtars, Harbhajans and Muralitharans at the expense of more orthodox bowlers, but it might give cricket a chance to find a new equilibrium. What won't work are discriminatory tolerance limits ? that way lies endless bickering and litigation. Different strokes for different folks is a plausible motto for a commune but a bad prescription for cricket.
"We contend that because the speed of his (Muralitharan's) upper-arm rotation is as fast, and in some cases quicker than, fast bowlers, his level of acceptability for elbow extension should also be set at the 10-degree mark."
The ICC needs to understand that it can't apply to science for warrants to enforce discriminatory laws. The laws of cricket, like other human laws, can't lay claim to the ultimate truth; but they must aspire to fairness. Good laws have two prime qualities: they are uniform and they are enforceable. ICC's tolerance limits meet neither criterion.
In India, for historical reasons, Muslims are governed by a separate personal law which, among other things, allows Muslim men to marry upto four women concurrently. Indians of other communities ? Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and so on ? are legally monogamous. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Muslim Personal Law, it has created in Indian politics endless controversy and grievance, real and imagined.
For cricket to create the equivalent of a Muslim personal law for fast bowlers ? "I'm allowed 10 degrees to your five" ? when the traditions of the game don't mandate such differentiation, is mad. Fortunately the law itself hasn't yet been changed, the statutes of our game don't formally recognise this sectarian distinction, and there is time for the ICC to take on board some heartfelt Indian advice: don't go there.
If the ICC intends to abide by the letter and spirit of the original law, there is an alternative course. The council should declare that it is willing to bend the law fractionally to accommodate research that shows that large numbers of bowlers find it difficult to bowl without straightening their arms. It should nominate a three-, four- or five-degree limit, a single-digit figure that is derived from the low end of research findings. Notice that the sentence doesn't read "bowl fast without straightening", but simply, "bowl without straightening".
The ICC should demand that every bowler come in at or under this minimum deviation from the straight-arm norm. It should make it clear that as the apex body of the game its main concern is with making all bowlers conform to the law rather than with stretching the law to fit some bowlers. Any fast bowlers who find it impossible to bowl at 98 mph without exceeding the three-degree cutoff will be welcome to decelerate till their bowling arcs fit the ICC template. Any spinners whose doosras (or for that matter, their 'pehlas') require a suspension of disbelief greater than three degrees (or four, or five, so long as the limit is low and general to all bowling species) will be sentenced to long hours in solitary watching videos of Bishen Bedi in his delivery stride from every angle that the archives can supply.
If the scientists are to be believed, many bowlers won't make the cut, but the integrity of cricket was never going to come cheap. Should the ICC not have the stomach for the uproar that will follow, it can go the more permissive route and peg the tolerance limit at 10 degrees for everyone. It will change bowling as we know it by encouraging the Lees, Akhtars, Harbhajans and Muralitharans at the expense of more orthodox bowlers, but it might give cricket a chance to find a new equilibrium. What won't work are discriminatory tolerance limits ? that way lies endless bickering and litigation. Different strokes for different folks is a plausible motto for a commune but a bad prescription for cricket.
http://uk.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/CRICKET_NEWS/2004/AUG/012625_WAC_01AUG2004.html
Murali argues that his arm rotates at the same speed as a fast bowler and thus, the tolerances placed upon him are unfair. He also shows that, by bowling with a brace, he can turn the ball both ways, without bending his arm. Leading biomechanist, Professor Bruce Elliott says the small bend in Murali's arm gives him no unfair advantage, but it is caused by the stress it is under, due to the speed of his rotation. The ICC also acknowledges that the research into spin bowling is insufficient, and readings of other spin bowlers have not been taken to use as a benchmark. Thus, the banning of Murali's doorsa is unfair, as it breaks an arbitarrily set limit, and thus should be quashed until further research is completed.
Murali argues that his arm rotates at the same speed as a fast bowler and thus, the tolerances placed upon him are unfair. He also shows that, by bowling with a brace, he can turn the ball both ways, without bending his arm. Leading biomechanist, Professor Bruce Elliott says the small bend in Murali's arm gives him no unfair advantage, but it is caused by the stress it is under, due to the speed of his rotation. The ICC also acknowledges that the research into spin bowling is insufficient, and readings of other spin bowlers have not been taken to use as a benchmark. Thus, the banning of Murali's doorsa is unfair, as it breaks an arbitarrily set limit, and thus should be quashed until further research is completed.
sohum
Executive member
Hey this is an old topic but anyway. Did anyone see that video where Murali put the brace on and bowled all his deliveries. The brace with the ICC regulations 'stamped' on it? It was marvelous to watch!!!
And about all teh flexion and all Murali is, what, 5 degrees off? How much is 5 degrees? How does using that 5 degrees help his spin? How, how, how? All fast bowlers chuck, according to the ICC regulations, at some point in their career. Its just some (like Shoaib and Lee) that do it more often than normal. As for spinners, the ICC just picks out a number and uses that as the permittable amount of flexing. For good effect, they put spinners at a disadvantage.
Luckily the ICC will be reviewing bowler actions at the Champions Trophy, and thus will be getting a better awareness of what is actually going on when spinners bowl. Then, they will be able to get a better idea of what legal amounts to set. Murali is a great bowler....the world of cricket will just not be the same if he's sitting in the commentary box.
And about all teh flexion and all Murali is, what, 5 degrees off? How much is 5 degrees? How does using that 5 degrees help his spin? How, how, how? All fast bowlers chuck, according to the ICC regulations, at some point in their career. Its just some (like Shoaib and Lee) that do it more often than normal. As for spinners, the ICC just picks out a number and uses that as the permittable amount of flexing. For good effect, they put spinners at a disadvantage.
Luckily the ICC will be reviewing bowler actions at the Champions Trophy, and thus will be getting a better awareness of what is actually going on when spinners bowl. Then, they will be able to get a better idea of what legal amounts to set. Murali is a great bowler....the world of cricket will just not be the same if he's sitting in the commentary box.
Hondo
Club Cricketer
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2004
- Online Cricket Games Owned
Chucking summit in Dubai
Charlie Austin
October 21, 2004
Murali is one of many bowlers beyond the current tolerance level ? Getty Images
An ICC chucking summit involving five former players and the world's leading experts on biomechanics will convene on October 25 and 26 in Dubai to review current regulations after the completion of in-depth research into one of the game's most emotive topics.
The five former players ? Angus Fraser, Michael Holding, Tim May, Aravinda de Silva and Tony Lewis ? will probe into research and make recommendations to the ICC Cricket Committee chaired by Sunil Gavaskar which is due to meet on November 9 and 10.
The sub-committee is expected to conclude that the ICC's current tolerance levels are increased after laboratory and match analysis has shown that a considerable number of international bowlers are presently exceeding permitted levels of arm-bend.
The ICC's current tolerance levels for arm-straightening permit spinners five-degree, and fast bowlers ten-degree, flexion. The tolerance levels were introduced in 2002 after scientific research indicated that the vast majority of bowlers broke the game's rigid throwing law.
The highest-profile casualty of the current system is Muttiah Muralitharan who was stopped from using his doosra ? a disguised leg break delivered from the back of his hand ? after laboratory research indicated that his arm bent by 14 degrees when bowling it.
This was later reduced to ten degrees after remedial action at the University of Western Australia, but Muralitharan still exceeded the ICC's tolerance levels. Muralitharan's arm straightens by an average of three degrees when bowling his stock off break.
But preliminary results from the latest research completed by Paul Hurrion, a UK-based sports scientist, during the ICC Champions Trophy, where video footage of the world's leading bowlers were recorded and analysed by super-speed cameras, indicate that Muralitharan's arm-bend is moderate in comparison to some bowlers.
The conclusions of a secret report conducted for Cricket Australia by Dr. Marc Porter, who analysed top-level fast bowlers from five countries in competitive match conditions over an 18-month period, in March 2003 revealed that 14 of the 34 deliveries analysed exceeded the ICC's ten-degree tolerance limit.
Further research carried out in New Zealand on spinners and research by Bruce Elliot from the University of Western Australia has also revealed the extent of the rule-breaking under the present system and the scientists are expected to recommend that tolerance levels be lifted immediately.
Scientists at the meeting will also debate the theory behind the ICC's sliding tolerance levels on the basis of ball speed. The University of Western Australia has argued before that this may discriminate against spinners, like Muralitharan, who have a similar arm speed to faster bowlers.
Cricket sources are predicting the adoption of a flat-rate 15 degree level of bending for all bowlers, which will allow Muralitharan to continue using the doosra when he returns to international cricket at the end of the year.
The decision of the ICC Cricket Committee will be ratified by the executive board by teleconference in late November or early December.
However, although Muralitharan is set to be cleared the controversy, somewhat predictably, is unlikely to blow away completely because other high-profile international bowlers would, according to the latest research which has a five-degree error margin, also exceed a 15-degree tolerance level.
Charlie Austin
October 21, 2004
Murali is one of many bowlers beyond the current tolerance level ? Getty Images
An ICC chucking summit involving five former players and the world's leading experts on biomechanics will convene on October 25 and 26 in Dubai to review current regulations after the completion of in-depth research into one of the game's most emotive topics.
The five former players ? Angus Fraser, Michael Holding, Tim May, Aravinda de Silva and Tony Lewis ? will probe into research and make recommendations to the ICC Cricket Committee chaired by Sunil Gavaskar which is due to meet on November 9 and 10.
The sub-committee is expected to conclude that the ICC's current tolerance levels are increased after laboratory and match analysis has shown that a considerable number of international bowlers are presently exceeding permitted levels of arm-bend.
The ICC's current tolerance levels for arm-straightening permit spinners five-degree, and fast bowlers ten-degree, flexion. The tolerance levels were introduced in 2002 after scientific research indicated that the vast majority of bowlers broke the game's rigid throwing law.
The highest-profile casualty of the current system is Muttiah Muralitharan who was stopped from using his doosra ? a disguised leg break delivered from the back of his hand ? after laboratory research indicated that his arm bent by 14 degrees when bowling it.
This was later reduced to ten degrees after remedial action at the University of Western Australia, but Muralitharan still exceeded the ICC's tolerance levels. Muralitharan's arm straightens by an average of three degrees when bowling his stock off break.
But preliminary results from the latest research completed by Paul Hurrion, a UK-based sports scientist, during the ICC Champions Trophy, where video footage of the world's leading bowlers were recorded and analysed by super-speed cameras, indicate that Muralitharan's arm-bend is moderate in comparison to some bowlers.
The conclusions of a secret report conducted for Cricket Australia by Dr. Marc Porter, who analysed top-level fast bowlers from five countries in competitive match conditions over an 18-month period, in March 2003 revealed that 14 of the 34 deliveries analysed exceeded the ICC's ten-degree tolerance limit.
Further research carried out in New Zealand on spinners and research by Bruce Elliot from the University of Western Australia has also revealed the extent of the rule-breaking under the present system and the scientists are expected to recommend that tolerance levels be lifted immediately.
Scientists at the meeting will also debate the theory behind the ICC's sliding tolerance levels on the basis of ball speed. The University of Western Australia has argued before that this may discriminate against spinners, like Muralitharan, who have a similar arm speed to faster bowlers.
Cricket sources are predicting the adoption of a flat-rate 15 degree level of bending for all bowlers, which will allow Muralitharan to continue using the doosra when he returns to international cricket at the end of the year.
The decision of the ICC Cricket Committee will be ratified by the executive board by teleconference in late November or early December.
However, although Muralitharan is set to be cleared the controversy, somewhat predictably, is unlikely to blow away completely because other high-profile international bowlers would, according to the latest research which has a five-degree error margin, also exceed a 15-degree tolerance level.
Murali has a flexion of 14 degrees. Agreed. That means he is physically handicapped in terms of playing cricket. Therefore he should not play cricket.
The additional 10 degrees of flexion gives Murali an unfair advantage.
I may be the world's best batsman but I can't run very fast because my knees are not strong since my birth. Does that mean that I will be allowed to play cricket with a runner all the times? Why make all these concessions?
The additional 10 degrees of flexion gives Murali an unfair advantage.
I may be the world's best batsman but I can't run very fast because my knees are not strong since my birth. Does that mean that I will be allowed to play cricket with a runner all the times? Why make all these concessions?
