Up to date as usual. Here are a couple things from Patrick Smith on Friday....
One, time to put out the rubbish:
Muralitharan action should see him in spin bin
THE ICC has ruled that Muttiah Muralitharan is not allowed to bowl his doosra delivery. Therefore Muralitharan should not be allowed to bowl at all. The scientists have deemed him a thrower.
Too right. I, for one, wouldn't have a problem if Murali was tossed -- boom, tish -- out of the game for good.
And two, come on ICC, come on, come on:
And the fact that Muralitharan's rise to world champion bowler entered the record books in a match against Zimbabwe when the performances of champion cricketers in the intense and brilliant World Series Cricket continue to be ignored by Wisden and the ICC is obscene. Utterly.
I hadn't thought of the WSC conundrum in a while. Smith's right of course. The wickets and runs scored in the summers of 1977/78 and 1978/79 were infinitely harder won than the recent playground figures achieved against hopeless minnows.
Muralitharan action should see him in spin bin
THE ICC has ruled that Muttiah Muralitharan is not allowed to bowl his doosra delivery. Therefore Muralitharan should not be allowed to bowl at all. The scientists have deemed him a thrower.
The doosra is a deadly ball not because it turns from leg to off, unlike his standard delivery, which turns from off to leg. If a batsman knows the ball is going to change direction then he can make the necessary adjustments.
The doosra is deadly because batsmen find it nigh impossible to pick that the ball will not take its usual course. We have seen it regularly as batsmen play for the ball to move into them only to see it jump and spin away in the opposite direction. The deception is so complete it leaves batsmen embarrassed.
For the world's elite cricketers to be regularly bewildered by Muralitharan's doosra can only mean the difference in action, production and delivery between his doosra and standard off-break is so small as to be indiscernible.
Consequently, if the Sri Lankan champion is bowling his doosra with up to a 14-degree straightening of the arm then he must surely be doing much the same with his off-spinner. And the ICC's rules, arbitrary and nonsensical as they are, state that a spin bowler cannot straighten his arm more than five degrees. So Muralitharan throws not just his doosra, he throws every delivery.
We suggest the ICC said as much in a news release issued on Tuesday in London. The release noted the ICC support for the Sri Lankan authorities' decision to forbid their spinner from bowling his doosra.
It also explained, in part, how the delivery was deemed illegal by the University of Western Australia boffins, who the ICC regularly turn to when bowl comes to chuck. The release read: "The WA University report showed an initial straightening of the arm of around 14 degrees which after some remedial work was reduced to 10 degrees. This compares to an allowable level of tolerance for spinners of five degrees under the ICC regulations."
Implicit in that statement is Muralitharan, who naturally delivered the ball with a 14-degree bend when first tested, would once away from the wires and computers of the WA university continue to bowl at 10 degrees.
That takes a great leap of faith. The spinner would surely revert quickly to his normal action. Not intentionally, of course, but naturally. It is after all the way he has bowled since his international debut. And if there was such a big difference between his natural and laboratorial doosra then it is fair to say the same would apply to his off-spinner.
In defence of their capricious decision to rule a spinner be allowed a five-degree tolerance in his action, medium-pacers 7.5 per cent and fast bowlers 10 per cent, the ICC says that all bowlers mostly bend their arm.
Said the ICC: "While in many cases, the level of straightening is imperceptible to the naked eye, scientific research has established the reality that straightening of the arm is likely because of the biomechanical forces at work during a bowling action."
That statement is the very reason why the new rules are nonsense. Before protractors and computers decided bowler from thrower, umpires were entrusted with the task of policing bowling actions. And they called bowlers for throwing as soon as the bending and straightening of the arm became obvious to the naked eye. It worked perfectly in the past, it was deemed inappropriate as soon as three Australian umpires called Muralitharan for throwing.
Sri Lanka was an emerging nation, it had the support of perhaps the most influential nation in world cricket - India. So rules were changed to allow Muralitharan to continue his form of the spinner's craft. The consequence of such weak leadership came last week as the Sri Lankan broke the world record for most Test wickets against a nation fielding a side that would struggle to be competitive in Australian suburban cricket.
The concern about Muralitharan's action, and the appalling quality of the Zimbabwe Test side combined to make the world record a most hollow event. There was no celebration, no glowing tributes. In London, The Times rated it the sixth most important cricket story of the day. County cricket news was considered more important.
If the ICC is to continue to allow the likes of Zimbabwe (selected on racial grounds) and Bangladesh (patently underdone for elite cricket) to compete against legitimate Test nations, then great contests and performances of the past are cheapened.
And the fact that Muralitharan's rise to world champion bowler entered the record books in a match against Zimbabwe when the performances of champion cricketers in the intense and brilliant World Series Cricket continue to be ignored by Wisden and the ICC is obscene. Utterly.
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