Muralitharan a burglar,a thief and a dacoit : Bedi

[Matt79]

I think Archie is copping an unfair pasting here - the guy is entitled to his beliefs, and I feel I can say the guy doesn't in my experience have a malicious bone his body. Its fine to argue with someone you disagree with but I think some of the reactions have been a bit over the top.

If got two comments on this issue:
1) I think some here are unhelpfully conflating a few issues. Ie. "the old rules were false, because the vast majority of bowlers never adhered to them anyway", which is almost certainly true, is nonetheless a separate point from "I agree with the new laws". Hence saying you dislike the new rules is not the same as saying you want the old rules. Hence saying that you think that a bowler like Murali throws the ball, regardless of the fact the new rules say he doesn't, doesn't mean that you want to defend what was an unworkable old system. On the flip side, saying that "Murali threw the ball under the old rules, but those rules were seriously flawed" does NOT prove that he doesn't throw the ball. The issue is what is the better system to adjudge these things and I don't know whether we've come up with one yet. Unless there's a system that is generally accepted as fair, then I don't think its fair to criticise people for doubting the results of the status quo as flat-earthers or what have you.

2) A couple of quotes for you (the second one is from memory since the movers lost the relevant book, but I'm quite sure I remember it accurately). One from an opposing captain, the other the skipper defending his bowler. Bonus points if you can tell me who they are:
First one: "It had taken just one ball and I knew... "[he] is a chucker".
Second one: "As I sat in my hotel room and watched this young man on the verge of tears as his life crumbled around him, I thought, what would those pushers of poisonous pens, those critics who are so quick to throw the word "chuck", with its meaning "cheat", think of what they had done to a gentle, fine human being. 'They are trying to take away my life skipper' he said."

 

[Richard]

Anyway I am bored with this now Where are the Awads?

Hah. I've been too busy arguing this this morning to get onto posting them. Will be done shortly, with any look.

 

[archie mac]

The last one was:



McGrath on the other hand had actually a higher bend. Yes, the one with a perfect action:



So if you still think the old rules were fair (which were 10 degrees), I don't really know what to say.

It was still not done during a Test Match was it?

 

[archie mac]

Hah. I've been too busy arguing this this morning to get onto posting them. Will be done shortly, with any look.

I hope you do a better job with them, then you have with your arguments in this thread mate

 

[Richard]

I think Archie is copping an unfair pasting here - the guy is entitled to his beliefs, and I feel I can say the guy doesn't in my experience have a malicious bone his body. Its fine to argue with someone you disagree with but I think some of the reactions have been a bit over the top.

If got two comments on this issue:
1) I think some here are unhelpfully conflating a few issues. Ie. "the old rules were false, because the vast majority of bowlers never adhered to them anyway", which is almost certainly true, is nonetheless a separate point from "I agree with the new laws". Hence saying you dislike the new rules is not the same as saying you want the old rules. Hence saying that you think that a bowler like Murali throws the ball, regardless of the fact the new rules say he doesn't, doesn't mean that you want to defend what was an unworkable old system. On the flip side, saying that "Murali threw the ball under the old rules, but those rules were seriously flawed" does NOT prove that he doesn't throw the ball. The issue is what is the better system to adjudge these things and I don't know whether we've come up with one yet. Unless there's a system that is generally accepted as fair, then I don't think its fair to criticise people for doubting the results of the status quo as flat-earthers or what have you.

The biggest bone of contention I have is saying that biomechanics are lesser than the human eye. The fact that Sean is arguing that suggests to me that he's arguing that the old laws were right, with which, as all know, I disagree.

No-one that I've seen says the new laws are ideal. They are merely better than what we had before, and reflect truths that have been discovered.

Second point - a couple of quotes for you (the second one is from memory since the movers lost the relevant book, but I'm quite sure I remember it accurately). One from an opposing captain, the other the skipper defending his bowler. Bonus points if you can tell me who they are:
First one: "It had taken just one ball and I knew... "[he] is a chucker".
Second one: "As I sat in my hotel room and watched this young man on the verge of tears as his life crumbled around him, I thought, what would those pushers of poisonous pens, those critics who are so quick to throw the word "chuck", with its meaning "cheat", think of what they had done to a gentle, fine human being. 'They are trying to take away my life skipper' he said."

Have heard both, but can't remember. Particularly love the 2nd one though.

 

[silentstriker]

First, Murali (and the doctor who made that brace for him, Mandeep Dhillon) showed us what that birth defect was all about. Murali's bowling arm does not straighten fully, as all our arms do. Second, and far more pertinent, we got a close-up view of where the momentum comes from in Murali's bowling - not a straightening of the elbow, but an abnormal rotation of the shoulder-joint on its axis, far more than most people can manage. This gives him momentum and sets him up for the moment of delivery, when his unusually supple wrists impart prodigious spin to the ball.

And now for the elbow brace. Created by Dr Dhillon, it was made of steel rods held together by heat-moulded plastic, and both Nicholas and Shastri attested that you couldn't straighten your arm in it.

..

Remarkably, despite the brace, it still appeared as though he was straightening his arm, even in the slow-motion replays - it was, clearly and uncontestably in this case, an optical illusion.

Just more information.

An optical illusion is not a party trick - the mechanism behind it is central to how we perceive the world. Our faculties of vision make what is remarkably complicated - in terms of depth, colours and motion - seem beguilingly simple. As VS Ramachandran puts it in his wonderful book, Phantoms in the Brain:

Seeing seems so effortless, so automatic, that we simply fail to recognise that vision is an incredibly complex - and still deeply mysterious - process. But consider, for a moment, what happens each time you glance at even the simplest scene ... all you're given are two upside-down two-dimensional images inside your eyeballs, but what you perceive is a single panoramic, right-side-up, three-dimensional world.

Our brain uses a variety of short cuts to achieve this and one of those - to use layman's language - is a filling in of blanks. We do not view the 32 frames in a second of film as 32 separate images, but as one seamless sequence of motion, and we process the images in the world around us similarly. (The simplest example of this is how we fill in our blind spot with a continuation of the image around it; click here to find your blind spot and see how this happens.)

A classic illustration of this is the neurological condition known as motion blindness - people who suffer from this do so because of damage to one of the 30 (according to Ramachandran) areas of the brain that process visual information, the middle temporal area. The visual filling in that makes motion appears seamless does not happen in such patients, and vision consists of a series of still images for them; to go back to the analogy of watching a film, they see all 32 frames as discrete images.

Another shortcut the brain takes is of noticing just the salient points of an image, and filling in the rest with those. In Ramachandran's words, "redundant or useless information is discarded wholesale and certain defining attributes of the visual image - such as edges - are strongly emphasized. (This is why a cartoonist can convey such a vivid picture with just a few pen strokes depicting the outlines or edges alone; he's mimicking what your visual system is specialised to do.)" To see a wonderful example of how this works, click here.

So why is this relevant to Murali? Well, I believe that this filling-in process explains why he seems to be straightening his arm to us. Take two points: A is where his arm goes above the shoulder, and B is where the ball is released. (My example holds even if you take 30 or 50 or 80 points instead of two; for the purpose of clarity, I'm being simplistic here.) Now, our brains are not actually processing every bit of information that our eyes receive; instead, they are taking the salient features, and using them to fill in what we think we see, and they do this within the framework of what we already know about motion and the human body and the act of bowling.

Now, Murali's arm, shoulder and wrists all possess abnormal properties, which we do not take into account because they do not exist in that mental framework. The only explanation within that framework for how he gets from Point A to Point B is that he straightens his arm, and that is what we see - and even when he is wearing the brace and our brains knows that he cannot straighten his arm, we still see a chuck. (Note the example I've linked to in the last para, for example - even after I know that the guy on the left is Clinton, my eyes still see Gore. What we know does not control what we see.)

It was still not done during a Test Match was it?

No, but there was no change in his action in the lab as compared to Tests. They had several people checking for any changes, but there was none (he had to give the same amount of revolutions and bowl it at the same speed as he does in Test matches as well).

 

[Richard]

It was still not done during a Test Match was it?

But why would results be any different? Why would McGrath et al bend their elbows during tests but not during Tests?

 

[Richard]

First, Murali (and the doctor who made that brace for him, Mandeep Dhillon) showed us what that birth defect was all about. Murali's bowling arm does not straighten fully, as all our arms do. Second, and far more pertinent, we got a close-up view of where the momentum comes from in Murali's bowling - not a straightening of the elbow, but an abnormal rotation of the shoulder-joint on its axis, far more than most people can manage. This gives him momentum and sets him up for the moment of delivery, when his unusually supple wrists impart prodigious spin to the ball.

And now for the elbow brace. Created by Dr Dhillon, it was made of steel rods held together by heat-moulded plastic, and both Nicholas and Shastri attested that you couldn't straighten your arm in it.

..

Remarkably, despite the brace, it still appeared as though he was straightening his arm, even in the slow-motion replays - it was, clearly and uncontestably in this case, an optical illusion.

Just more information.

An optical illusion is not a party trick - the mechanism behind it is central to how we perceive the world. Our faculties of vision make what is remarkably complicated - in terms of depth, colours and motion - seem beguilingly simple. As VS Ramachandran puts it in his wonderful book, Phantoms in the Brain:

Seeing seems so effortless, so automatic, that we simply fail to recognise that vision is an incredibly complex - and still deeply mysterious - process. But consider, for a moment, what happens each time you glance at even the simplest scene ... all you're given are two upside-down two-dimensional images inside your eyeballs, but what you perceive is a single panoramic, right-side-up, three-dimensional world.

Our brain uses a variety of short cuts to achieve this and one of those - to use layman's language - is a filling in of blanks. We do not view the 32 frames in a second of film as 32 separate images, but as one seamless sequence of motion, and we process the images in the world around us similarly. (The simplest example of this is how we fill in our blind spot with a continuation of the image around it; click here to find your blind spot and see how this happens.)

A classic illustration of this is the neurological condition known as motion blindness - people who suffer from this do so because of damage to one of the 30 (according to Ramachandran) areas of the brain that process visual information, the middle temporal area. The visual filling in that makes motion appears seamless does not happen in such patients, and vision consists of a series of still images for them; to go back to the analogy of watching a film, they see all 32 frames as discrete images.

Another shortcut the brain takes is of noticing just the salient points of an image, and filling in the rest with those. In Ramachandran's words, "redundant or useless information is discarded wholesale and certain defining attributes of the visual image - such as edges - are strongly emphasized. (This is why a cartoonist can convey such a vivid picture with just a few pen strokes depicting the outlines or edges alone; he's mimicking what your visual system is specialised to do.)" To see a wonderful example of how this works, click here.

So why is this relevant to Murali? Well, I believe that this filling-in process explains why he seems to be straightening his arm to us. Take two points: A is where his arm goes above the shoulder, and B is where the ball is released. (My example holds even if you take 30 or 50 or 80 points instead of two; for the purpose of clarity, I'm being simplistic here.) Now, our brains are not actually processing every bit of information that our eyes receive; instead, they are taking the salient features, and using them to fill in what we think we see, and they do this within the framework of what we already know about motion and the human body and the act of bowling.

Now, Murali's arm, shoulder and wrists all possess abnormal properties, which we do not take into account because they do not exist in that mental framework. The only explanation within that framework for how he gets from Point A to Point B is that he straightens his arm, and that is what we see - and even when he is wearing the brace and our brains knows that he cannot straighten his arm, we still see a chuck. (Note the example I've linked to in the last para, for example - even after I know that the guy on the left is Clinton, my eyes still see Gore. What we know does not control what we see.)

Remember that article (I think ) thought it was superb.

 

[archie mac]

I think Archie is copping an unfair pasting here - the guy is entitled to his beliefs, and I feel I can say the guy doesn't in my experience have a malicious bone his body. Its fine to argue with someone you disagree with but I think some of the reactions have been a bit over the top.

If got two comments on this issue:
1) I think some here are unhelpfully conflating a few issues. Ie. "the old rules were false, because the vast majority of bowlers never adhered to them anyway", which is almost certainly true, is nonetheless a separate point from "I agree with the new laws". Hence saying you dislike the new rules is not the same as saying you want the old rules. Hence saying that you think that a bowler like Murali throws the ball, regardless of the fact the new rules say he doesn't, doesn't mean that you want to defend what was an unworkable old system. On the flip side, saying that "Murali threw the ball under the old rules, but those rules were seriously flawed" does NOT prove that he doesn't throw the ball. The issue is what is the better system to adjudge these things and I don't know whether we've come up with one yet. Unless there's a system that is generally accepted as fair, then I don't think its fair to criticise people for doubting the results of the status quo as flat-earthers or what have you.

2) A couple of quotes for you (the second one is from memory since the movers lost the relevant book, but I'm quite sure I remember it accurately). One from an opposing captain, the other the skipper defending his bowler. Bonus points if you can tell me who they are:
First one: "It had taken just one ball and I knew... "[he] is a chucker".
Second one: "As I sat in my hotel room and watched this young man on the verge of tears as his life crumbled around him, I thought, what would those pushers of poisonous pens, those critics who are so quick to throw the word "chuck", with its meaning "cheat", think of what they had done to a gentle, fine human being. 'They are trying to take away my life skipper' he said."

Thanks for the support mate, tbh I did not word my post this morning the way I wanted, as I was in a hurry. But yet you would have thought after a few thousands posts, and never having ago at anyone they would cut me a little slack

 

[silentstriker]

On the flip side, saying that "Murali threw the ball under the old rules, but those rules were seriously flawed" does NOT prove that he doesn't throw the ball.

No, but it means that if he throws is, so does McGrath, Lee, Gillespie and almost every other bowler on the planet. The question is, if you read the article I posted above, whether you can ban someone for what has been proven to be an optical illusion. That's the question right there.

If you feel thats grounds for banishment, than that's fine, but I can't see the logic in that.

I don't think its fair to criticise people for doubting the results of the status quo as flat-earthers or what have you.

You can disagree with the current system, and many do, and that's fine. But if you refuse to believe that all the bowlers violated the old rules, you are just not facing facts. I am not sure how else to say it. And no one called Archie any names, just a couple of us were surprised that someone like archie (whom we all respect) would have that type of view, that's all.

 

[Richard]

I hope you do a better job with them, then you have with your arguments in this thread mate

Am sorely tempted to give myself next week's Sir Geoffrey now... will give me a few days to consider it tho.

 

[Matt79]

The biggest bone of contention I have is saying that biomechanics are lesser than the human eye. The fact that Sean is arguing that suggests to me that he's arguing that the old laws were right, with which, as all know, I disagree.

No-one that I've seen says the new laws are ideal. They are merely better than what we had before, and reflect truths that have been discovered.

Not trying to rephrase Archie's arguments, God knows he has absolutely no need of me doing that for him, but I guess I'd make the point that while biomechanics as a science is a legitimate field in which there is a huge volume of basically incontrovertible evidence about many things, it is also an area where experts will disagree and people can, not necessarily do, but can find scientific opinions to back what they want to argue anyway. It certainly happens in lots of sports, one notable example is the one Archie gave of tribunals/discipline boards being confronted by a team of biomechanists and lawyers explaining why an otherwise illegal bump or strike was in fact not what it appeared to be. Short version, I think you can doubt some biomechanical studies without having to believe the entire subject is a nonsense.

 

[archie mac]

But why would results be any different? Why would McGrath et al bend their elbows during tests but not during Tests?

Not refering to them, I am refering to Murali knowing that he was under pressure maybe he did his best to keep his arm straight. I am not saying he was cheating just that he was concentrating on his action rather than spinning the ball, like he would be more concerned with in a Test Match

 

[silentstriker]

Not trying to rephrase Archie's arguments, God knows he has absolutely no need of me doing that for him, but I guess I'd make the point that while biomechanics as a science is a legitimate field in which there is a huge volume of basically incontrovertible evidence about many things, it is also an area where experts will disagree and people can, not necessarily do, but can find scientific opinions to back what they want to argue anyway. It certainly happens in lots of sports, one notable example is the one Archie gave of tribunals/discipline boards being confronted by a team of biomechanists and lawyers explaining why an otherwise illegal bump or strike was in fact not what it appeared to be. Short version, I think you can doubt some biomechanical studies without having to believe the entire subject is a nonsense.

So again, how do you explain that people couldn't see the change in his action when he was wearing a brace and it still looked like an elbow straightening despite the brace making it impossible to do so? And you are comparing an empirical study (count the degree of bend) to a subjective one (he did not know what he was doing). Two separate things.

Unless of course his elbow could bend steel.

 

[Richard]

Not trying to rephrase Archie's arguments, God knows he has absolutely no need of me doing that for him, but I guess I'd make the point that while biomechanics as a science is a legitimate field in which there is a huge volume of basically incontrovertible evidence about many things, it is also an area where experts will disagree and people can, not necessarily do, but can find scientific opinions to back what they want to argue anyway. It certainly happens in lots of sports, one notable example is the one Archie gave of tribunals/discipline boards being confronted by a team of biomechanists and lawyers explaining why an otherwise illegal bump or strike was in fact not what it appeared to be. Short version, I think you can doubt some biomechanical studies without having to believe the entire subject is a nonsense.

The thing is, though, why would anyone want to do that? Why would anyone be undertaking the study with a predetermined outcome in desire?

In fact, if anything, surely that outcome would have been far more likely to be one that'd find the precise opposite of what was in fact found?

In any case, I don't like believing in what, essentially, is corrupt investigation. Therefore, unless there's strong evidence that this was the case, I tend to believe the outcome was genuine.

 

[Matt79]

No, but it means that if he throws is, so does McGrath, Lee, Gillespie and almost every other bowler on the planet. The question is, if you read the article I posted above, whether you can ban someone for what has been proven to be an optical illusion. That's the question right there.

If you feel thats grounds for banishment, than that's fine, but I can't see the logic in that.

I don't think someone should be banned for an optical illusion. I guess one thing you can draw from what I was saying before is that it is possible to agree that people shouldn't be banned on account of an optical illusion, and yet still have doubts about Murali's action.

And no one called Archie any names, just a couple of us were surprised that someone like archie (whom we all respect) would have that type of view, that's all.

That's fine, I guess what I was commenting on can be summarised in this question - do you now not respect Archie, or respect him less?

 

[silentstriker]

At this point, it has been proven that it is an optical illusion and the mechanism for that optical illusion is described. Yet the argument is still the same that 'I see him chucking', even after it is shown incontrovertibly the exact physical reason for the illusion. If people want to keep thinking that, well, there is really nothing else that someone can do IMO.

Flat earth is right. I don't know what else to say.

 

[Richard]

Not refering to them, I am refering to Murali knowing that he was under pressure maybe he did his best to keep his arm straight. I am not saying he was cheating just that he was concentrating on his action rather than spinning the ball, like he would be more concerned with in a Test Match

But as Manan said, there were people who examined him and found he was bowling the same pace with the same revs on the ball as ever.

In any case, unless you're prescribing an exact bend-ometer to be used for every single ball in every single cricket-match, I don't see how it really matters anyway. Things can go differently in the middle to the testing-lab, that's just life. Unless you have a solution, there ain't much point whining about it.

 

[silentstriker]

That's fine, I guess what I was commenting on can be summarised in this question - do you now not respect Archie, or respect him less?

I don't think I respect him any less, but with a lot of posters I would have stopped bothering a long time ago, but with Archie I am trying to see his logic because I do think he is a reasonable fellow.

 

[archie mac]

Not trying to rephrase Archie's arguments, God knows he has absolutely no need of me doing that for him, but I guess I'd make the point that while biomechanics as a science is a legitimate field in which there is a huge volume of basically incontrovertible evidence about many things, it is also an area where experts will disagree and people can, not necessarily do, but can find scientific opinions to back what they want to argue anyway. It certainly happens in lots of sports, one notable example is the one Archie gave of tribunals/discipline boards being confronted by a team of biomechanists and lawyers explaining why an otherwise illegal bump or strike was in fact not what it appeared to be. Short version, I think you can doubt some biomechanical studies without having to believe the entire subject is a nonsense.

Yes, what I have been saying, did not word it well this morning, but still thought SS understood at the time.

I am saying I still think Murali has more of a bent arm than any other bowler playing the game atm