vic_orthdox
Global Moderator
Hmm, it comes up for me.
Bloody hate Patrick Smith though.
Bloody hate Patrick Smith though.
-
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Johan Botha's action
- Thread starter Craig
- Start date
BoyBrumby
Englishman
Comes across as a "Is it just me?"/ voice of reason merchant in that article.
Doesn't mean he's wrong either tho, however much of a merchant he may be.
vic_orthdox
Global Moderator
The ultimate irony?
Smith was called for chucking in Melbourne grade cricket years ago, and was known for a pretty suspect action.
Smith was called for chucking in Melbourne grade cricket years ago, and was known for a pretty suspect action.
vic_orthdox
Global Moderator
Sport treating fans like idiots
Patrick Smith - The Australian
NOT for the first time it seems sport has gone more than a little mad. Bonkers, really.
It must be that games of all kinds are such passionate pursuits for administrators, players and supporters that little mind is given to common sense. So in that kerfuffle of ideas that belong to those who seek to serve and play sport for our entertainment, we are treated as outright dills. It is not the first time we have touched on this phenomenon.
Let's begin with cricket. Johan Botha has been reported for having a suspicious action. Now there are a couple of things quite mad about Botha's situation. Firstly, the fact that he, along with fellow finger spinner Roelof van der Merwe, have so mesmerised the Australian batsmen with their impotent offerings is a frightening portent for what lies ahead of our national team. The spinners - Botha right-arm, van der Merwe left - have taken nine wickets between them in the four limited over matches in South Africa. Both of them have gone at less than 4.5 runs an over. They should be going at 4.5 a ball.
The Australians have lacked both imagination and courage in confronting these two spinners. The batsmen have looked like men standing on the edge of a cliff, too scared to even think about what might happen if they even centimetred forward. Crazier still, it has just occurred to umpires that Botha might actually be throwing the ball. He couldn't bend his arm any more if he was playing darts.
Botha, the limited over vice-captain, was tested in 2006 and given the all-clear after some remedial action. After the last game just gone, the umpires decided he might be having a lend of us with his faster ball and his doosra. Gentlemen, please, he has been taking the mickey with every delivery. He threw the ball in 2006 and throws the ball now.
Of course, immediately a bowler is accused of having a suspicious action it is discovered he has battled some crippling deformity since birth or at least since he has been queried. In this case Bruce Elliott, the boffin from the University of Western Australia who is used by the ICC to assess these matters, says the fact that Botha cannot straighten his arm distorts our vision of the spinner's action. Something to do with something called the "abduction angle".
The umpires have reported Botha because they think he must be bending his arm more than the legal 15 degrees. Are they comedians? Did they sit back in the first three one-day games and think that Botha was fine because he was bowling at 14.5 degrees or right on the button of 15? The fact is that they could not possibly tell. The good boffin Elliott can only determine the angle when he takes bowlers into his laboratory, traps them in a web of wires and stickers, and then consults his computers. And even then it has been an imprecise science. Up until now a bowler was cleared if, on average over a number of deliveries, he was 15 degrees or under.
Elliott said this week that absurdity had now been changed. If a bowler delivers just one ball during his assessment that registers more than 15 degrees then he will be banned and sent off for correction. Which, in reality, means keep a low profile for four months or so and you will be welcomed back - chucking or bowling.
All of this does not take into account that the marker of 15 degrees is so arbitrary as to be laughable. It has been set at 15 degrees because if a bowler transgresses by anything greater then it is considered it would be immediately obvious to the naked eye that the bowler's arm is not straight enough. Why then have Botha and a thousand other bowlers been allowed to continue in cricket? More bowlers than not are bending their arm in delivery.
We can see it at the ground and on the television. It is a fiasco that we need a boffin and his machines to confirm the bleeding obvious.
In fairness to cricket it is not the only sport that thinks we are dullards. Take the Adelaide Football Club in particular and the AFL in general. Crows defender Nathan Bock is back in the side after an indefinite ban following his arrest for assaulting his girl friend. Indefinite is an interesting word in that, used within AFL circles, it has a very different meaning than appears explained in dictionaries. When an AFL or club official uses the word indefinite he actually means one week. You need to discard the accepted definition of "not fixed or limited in length, size, duration, or quantity." That's just being pedantic.
Bock is back for the match against Geelong today because he is in a happy place where previously he had been in a pub, drunk and charged with assaulting his partner. Adelaide chief executive Steven Trigg conceded that indefinite was a tricky word to nail down but said: "My advice is missing more games doesn't help him at all, and missing more games in fact could be counterproductive to his mindset in terms of rehabilitation."
Consider, too, that North Melbourne players Adam Simpson and Daniel Pratt were both fined but not suspended for their prominent part in the awful "chicken video" that so degraded women. The AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou says the answer to players behaving badly has always been education and will always be education. The players' association, which has $25m a year to splash on instructional programs for its players, also agrees that education is the answer.
OK then, Demetriou and the players' union need to explain this: Simpson has been in the AFL system since 1995, Bock and Pratt since 2004. That's a combined total of 24 years. In all that time, after all those classes, all those tutorials, all those pamphlets and dossiers, these players still have to be educated that it is not right to hit women, nor maintain a culture where a whole club has to apologise for a video that demeans women.
The AFL needs to review the intellectual strength of its education courses or immediately end the irresponsible spending of $25m. To keep saying, trance-like, that education is doing the job is to treat the game's supporters as nincompoops. We can take comfort in one thing. Cricket and football administrators are bigger dills than they think we are dopes.
Patrick Smith - The Australian
NOT for the first time it seems sport has gone more than a little mad. Bonkers, really.
It must be that games of all kinds are such passionate pursuits for administrators, players and supporters that little mind is given to common sense. So in that kerfuffle of ideas that belong to those who seek to serve and play sport for our entertainment, we are treated as outright dills. It is not the first time we have touched on this phenomenon.
Let's begin with cricket. Johan Botha has been reported for having a suspicious action. Now there are a couple of things quite mad about Botha's situation. Firstly, the fact that he, along with fellow finger spinner Roelof van der Merwe, have so mesmerised the Australian batsmen with their impotent offerings is a frightening portent for what lies ahead of our national team. The spinners - Botha right-arm, van der Merwe left - have taken nine wickets between them in the four limited over matches in South Africa. Both of them have gone at less than 4.5 runs an over. They should be going at 4.5 a ball.
The Australians have lacked both imagination and courage in confronting these two spinners. The batsmen have looked like men standing on the edge of a cliff, too scared to even think about what might happen if they even centimetred forward. Crazier still, it has just occurred to umpires that Botha might actually be throwing the ball. He couldn't bend his arm any more if he was playing darts.
Botha, the limited over vice-captain, was tested in 2006 and given the all-clear after some remedial action. After the last game just gone, the umpires decided he might be having a lend of us with his faster ball and his doosra. Gentlemen, please, he has been taking the mickey with every delivery. He threw the ball in 2006 and throws the ball now.
Of course, immediately a bowler is accused of having a suspicious action it is discovered he has battled some crippling deformity since birth or at least since he has been queried. In this case Bruce Elliott, the boffin from the University of Western Australia who is used by the ICC to assess these matters, says the fact that Botha cannot straighten his arm distorts our vision of the spinner's action. Something to do with something called the "abduction angle".
The umpires have reported Botha because they think he must be bending his arm more than the legal 15 degrees. Are they comedians? Did they sit back in the first three one-day games and think that Botha was fine because he was bowling at 14.5 degrees or right on the button of 15? The fact is that they could not possibly tell. The good boffin Elliott can only determine the angle when he takes bowlers into his laboratory, traps them in a web of wires and stickers, and then consults his computers. And even then it has been an imprecise science. Up until now a bowler was cleared if, on average over a number of deliveries, he was 15 degrees or under.
Elliott said this week that absurdity had now been changed. If a bowler delivers just one ball during his assessment that registers more than 15 degrees then he will be banned and sent off for correction. Which, in reality, means keep a low profile for four months or so and you will be welcomed back - chucking or bowling.
All of this does not take into account that the marker of 15 degrees is so arbitrary as to be laughable. It has been set at 15 degrees because if a bowler transgresses by anything greater then it is considered it would be immediately obvious to the naked eye that the bowler's arm is not straight enough. Why then have Botha and a thousand other bowlers been allowed to continue in cricket? More bowlers than not are bending their arm in delivery.
We can see it at the ground and on the television. It is a fiasco that we need a boffin and his machines to confirm the bleeding obvious.
In fairness to cricket it is not the only sport that thinks we are dullards. Take the Adelaide Football Club in particular and the AFL in general. Crows defender Nathan Bock is back in the side after an indefinite ban following his arrest for assaulting his girl friend. Indefinite is an interesting word in that, used within AFL circles, it has a very different meaning than appears explained in dictionaries. When an AFL or club official uses the word indefinite he actually means one week. You need to discard the accepted definition of "not fixed or limited in length, size, duration, or quantity." That's just being pedantic.
Bock is back for the match against Geelong today because he is in a happy place where previously he had been in a pub, drunk and charged with assaulting his partner. Adelaide chief executive Steven Trigg conceded that indefinite was a tricky word to nail down but said: "My advice is missing more games doesn't help him at all, and missing more games in fact could be counterproductive to his mindset in terms of rehabilitation."
Consider, too, that North Melbourne players Adam Simpson and Daniel Pratt were both fined but not suspended for their prominent part in the awful "chicken video" that so degraded women. The AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou says the answer to players behaving badly has always been education and will always be education. The players' association, which has $25m a year to splash on instructional programs for its players, also agrees that education is the answer.
OK then, Demetriou and the players' union need to explain this: Simpson has been in the AFL system since 1995, Bock and Pratt since 2004. That's a combined total of 24 years. In all that time, after all those classes, all those tutorials, all those pamphlets and dossiers, these players still have to be educated that it is not right to hit women, nor maintain a culture where a whole club has to apologise for a video that demeans women.
The AFL needs to review the intellectual strength of its education courses or immediately end the irresponsible spending of $25m. To keep saying, trance-like, that education is doing the job is to treat the game's supporters as nincompoops. We can take comfort in one thing. Cricket and football administrators are bigger dills than they think we are dopes.
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Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
I obviously don't know a thing about the AFL thingy before now so I clearly have just a single angle on it, but he doesn't seem too unreasonable in what he says about that.
As for the cricket stuff, there's some parts that I agree with and some that I disagree with - ie, the bit about Botha being a blatant chucker that it doesn't need any testing to confirm, and Botha and van der Merwe being mere pie-chuckers who any batsman worth their salt would smash out of sight (that's not, BTW, to say that I rate either enormously, just that such exaggerations rarely credit a writer). And also the part which essentially implies that physical deformities are fabricated to excuse an erring bowler, which is patent nonsense.
However, I've long said that the testing process is un-ideal, and that the 15-degree mark far from ideal either.
As for the cricket stuff, there's some parts that I agree with and some that I disagree with - ie, the bit about Botha being a blatant chucker that it doesn't need any testing to confirm, and Botha and van der Merwe being mere pie-chuckers who any batsman worth their salt would smash out of sight (that's not, BTW, to say that I rate either enormously, just that such exaggerations rarely credit a writer). And also the part which essentially implies that physical deformities are fabricated to excuse an erring bowler, which is patent nonsense.
However, I've long said that the testing process is un-ideal, and that the 15-degree mark far from ideal either.
silentstriker
The Wheel is Forever
The guy is an idiot.
Son Of Coco
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
To a certain extent we're still ignorant now when we report a player as we are simply going on what we see. We have to wait (possibly weeks to months) to find out if what we thought was correct or not.
Given we didn't have the systems in place we also can't assume every call made that insinuated a bowler threw was incorrect (and thus ignorant). They followed the same process as the reporting of an action now...they just didn't have the evidence available to back up (or refute) what they thought they saw. That's the good part of the new system.
Having a system which is apparently a reform of the old system but yet allows for an average of all deliveries to fall under 15 degrees is obviously a bit stupid though. The whole idea is that you don't throw any of the deliveries in your repertoire, not that on average you keep them all under. Fortunately this has changed recently it seems.
Son Of Coco
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
He does come across as being a bit holier than thou in the article. Especially where he is seemingly dismissing the process where a bowler's flexion is measured as 'having a heap of wires attached' etc etc.
Son Of Coco
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
It depends on whether he's talking about International level or local cricket. It's impossible to fabricate something like that at International level as it would be tested. At local level (below top domestic comps) I'd be inclined to agree. I've heard this excuse a number of times in reply to accusations someone's action looks suspect. And there's really nothing you can do as no one's going to march them off to be tested.
Manee
Cricketer Of The Year
Would agree strongly here about the previous system.
Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
It's a different type of ignorance though. The point was that the old ignorance was that fair was thought to be zero degrees; now it's on whether bowler X is 12 degrees or 19 degress.
Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
If he was talking about club cricket then yeah, fair enough - at that level I don't have so much as a single experience of a guy with an action that looks suspect to the naked-eye having a deformity of the elbow.
Well, actually, I do - a mate of mine has the exact same deformity as Murali - his arm only straightens to about 170 degrees or so. I know, because we attend the gym together. So when he bowls his action looks far more suspect than, for example, mine. Whether he's ever had his action questioned by opponents I don't know - and he's principally a batsman anyway so it might not be too important. He's a seamer BTW, but the similarity to Murali, the spinner, is still very apparent.
But the implication seemed to be that other internationals were just fabricating excuses that have explained how Murali's action looks worse than it is. And that's patent nonsense, because Johan Botha and those who have the opposite of him and Murali - ie, hyper-extension (and there are inevitably a decent few who do have that, because it's not uncommon) - will have doctors' certificates to prove it.
TT Boy
Hall of Fame Member
Been cleared but has been 'banned' from bowling the doosra...
Botha gets T20 World Cup green light
Mickey Arthur - "Johan used the delivery (doosra) very sparingly and I don’t think it played a role in his success. He will still be an important weapon for us,” said Arthur. Botha trapped Mitchell Johnson leg before wicket with a stunning doosra in Centurion, but it was the only wicket in the series that he took with the delivery. "
Botha gets T20 World Cup green light
Mickey Arthur - "Johan used the delivery (doosra) very sparingly and I don’t think it played a role in his success. He will still be an important weapon for us,” said Arthur. Botha trapped Mitchell Johnson leg before wicket with a stunning doosra in Centurion, but it was the only wicket in the series that he took with the delivery. "
vic_orthdox
Global Moderator
Thought his quicker ball was more lethal than his doosra, thought it looked more suspect too. All's well that ends well, I guess.
TT Boy
Hall of Fame Member
I think so as well. It created self-doubt in the Australian batsman as they become reluctant to try and milk him onto the onside. He did bowl the doosra a lot in Aus but as Arthur said sparingly in the Republic, as the doubt was already there.
Interesting to see how effective he will be now.
Noble One
International Vice-Captain
Will remain a reasonably useful limited over’s off-spinner. As has been mentioned his doosra was not a huge wicket taking threat, just created doubt in the batsman's mind. Still maintains a beautiful trajectory for a limited over’s spin bowler, and I'm sure the tightness of his bowling will continue. Undoubtedly looks one of the smartest cricketing minds going around, will find a method other than the Doosra to remain a success.
Good result to put away the Doosra if it means the alternative is to be banned from bowling entirely.
Good result to put away the Doosra if it means the alternative is to be banned from bowling entirely.
