Monthly Archives: August 2008

espnstar.com, August 4, 2006

It would be tempting to say that former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe set the cat among the pigeons with his no-nonsense thoughts on chucking at the Colin Cowdrey Lecture on the Spirit of Cricket at Lord’s last week. Yet, many a cricketing heavyweight has expressed similar thoughts before but to no avail.
Typically, the ICC shot back, through its General Manager (Cricket) Dave Richardson, to defend its policy against bowling action and claim that the ICC is dealing with the issue of bowlers with suspect actions more effectively than ever before. He even claimed that ICC had not taken away the umpire’s prerogative to call any bowlers for chucking.
Of course, Richardson spoke of Pakistan paceman Shabbir Ahmed being banned for a year, listed five bowlers who were recommended for biomechanical scrutiny and 12 bowlers who were spotted with illegal actions at the under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka earlier this year.
And, predictably, the ICC rang the alarm bells yet again, warning those raising their voice against chucking as a malady affecting international cricket.
“Under a strict interpretation of the Law, nearly all bowlers were breaking the rules but if we ruled out every bowler that did that then there would be no bowlers left,” he reiterated.
The ‘everyone chucks’ argument does not come across a very good line of defence. It may be a fact that a group of biomechanics will have come up with starling data that every bowler straightens his arm in the moment preceding the delivery but why should that stop umpires from calling a bowler?
“The facts are that some bowlers, even those never suspected of having flawed actions, were found likely to be straightening their arms by 11 or 12 degrees. And at the same time, some bowlers that may appear to be throwing may be hyper-extending or bowl with permanently bent elbows,” Richardson said.
Though I have been aware of this claim for a long time, I nearly fell off my chair when I read Richardson’s argument about bowlers appearing to be throwing because they have hyper-extensions of their elbows or have been born with bent elbows. To me, it sounded as if the ICC were speaking for such gifted artists because they come across as embellishments to the game.
I am reminded of former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi’s oft-repeated statement that cricket is a game for the able bodied. If someone were born with bent elbows or with hyper-extending elbows, too bad. “Would you allow a person with defective eyesight to pilot an aircraft?” he asks.
I have repeatedly cited the example of leg-spin genius BS Chandrasekhar being polio affected but his bowling never broke the Laws of Cricket. Naturally, cricket’s mandarins did not need to bend the rules to let him play. Pakistan’s left-arm paceman Azim Hafeez is another example of a bowler with a deformity who did not mock at the Laws.
Curiously, Richardson said the umpire remains the judge.
“The umpire retains the right to call a bowler for throwing and the first judgment he makes is still based on his instincts after viewing an action with the naked eye,” Richardson said. Even he would admit that no umpire has called an bowler in a Test or one-day international in many a moon, simply because none is prepared to bell the cat.
Cricket needs to empower its umpires — and not just with lip service.
Then again, umpires cannot say they have been disarmed. Of course, at the international level, the ICC has a reporting system in place but the moot question is: How is it that youngsters with illegal bowling actions escape scrutiny at an early stage? How is it that these bowlers get to parade their gifts at the international level without any remedial work on their actions?
The ICC’s Bowling Action Advisory Panel at the under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka identified as many as five bowlers from Test-playing nations as being worthy of corrective action. How did these bowlers get to that level? Were the umpires in their home nations not alert enough?
Truth to tell, the ICC does encourage its member nations to take corrective steps for bowlers at a young age but little seems to have come of such an initiative. And that is the reason why Crowe’s passionate plea for chucking to be chucked out of the game once and for all will be another voice in the wilderness.

espnstar.com, July 22, 2006

It feels nice to be back in this space after a break. Much water has flowed under the bridge in the interim and while one has been hooked to World Cup football action on ESPN in the past month, watching Zidane surprise critics and connoisseurs alike with his magic, one has also kept track of the developments in cricket.
The Indian team has had mixed results, first letting England come back and draw a Test series 1-1 before winning the one-day series comfortably 5-1. Riding on the trough and at a time when everyone thought that India’s development as the world’s second best one-day squad behind Australia was close to complete, India went to the West Indies with minimal preparation and contrived to lose the one-day series 1-4 before squeezing out a 1-0 victory in the four Test series.
The one-day series loss in the West Indies will rankle, even if the team management were to say that in some ways it was good to have been beaten so that complacency would not creep into the team’s countenance. It was a direct result of the inadequate preparation for the tour, the team assembling barely a day before departure and doing little home work about the West Indies players and pitches.
And while the team could draw some satisfaction from a 1-0 Test series win that came after a 35-year wait, it would be the first to concede that it could have come away with a more comprehensive show of its superiority. Of course, it is not as if the West Indies team would have stood by and let India deliver a 3-0 verdict but Rahul Dravid’s team was unable to translate its supremacy well enough, letting Lara make a decision on whether to enforce the follow-on or not.
The most heartening development in the time I was away from this space has been the emergence of Munaf Patel and S Sreesanth as pace bowlers of promise and quality. They have both lent the Indian bowling attack a cutting egde, something that Anil Kumble will delightfully acknowledge as critical. The pair has been uncomplaining about the workload brought to bear on it by Dravid. On the contrary, both Patel and Sreesanth appear to have enjoyed the responsibility.
Away from the field, it is just as well that the ICC Executive Board did not approve the idea of letting teams prefer three appeals per innings in the ICC Champions Trophy against umpiring decisions if they felt the verdicts made by the on-field umpires were incorrect. We may disagree with the ICC on several issues but it needs to be lauded this time for being concerned about the impact of the trial on the Spirit of Cricket and the effect it might have on the integrity of umpiring at all levels.
I wish the ICC had been as concerned when the integrity of the umpires was challenged by its decision to not to let them call no ball when bowlers delivered the ball with action that did not confirm to the law. Instead, the ICC bent the rules to allow many bowlers with suspect action to get away and make an impact on world cricket. We have got to a ridiculous stage where geometry has come into play. It is time that ICC admits its mistake and lets umpire regain full control of the game.
I have grown up with the belief that the human element is an integral part of the game that generates such passion. And for a further reduction of the human element – in fact, an erosion of the umpires’ authority ��� would have been grossly unfair to the traditions of the game. For a game that could suspend Brian Lara, no less, for two one-days games for gesturing to the umpire to seek the opinion of the TV umpire to let players refer umpiring decisions to technology aka TV umpire would have been a huge shift.
The other good thing that the ICC did in the past few weeks was to clarify that in the event of technology not coming up with clinching evidence that a fielder has stepped on the boundary line when taking a catch, his word would count. After all, that is what happens in first class cricket where there is no technology available for the umpires to refer such decisions to.
Yes, there seems a chance that cricket will continue to be a gentleman’s game.

espnstar.com, July 9, 2006