Migara
International Coach
Senanayake's ban I think is fair. But I have massive doubts on how the particular deliveries were selected to reproduce."The big 3" nations don't have the history or culture of off spin bowling on the scale that Sri Lanka does. Thus it's natural that because there's more (rather unorthodox) offies from SL; so more Sri Lankans are to be reported. To say it's a conspiracy of the top 3 nations is sheer nonsense.
I think there's a problem with people over reacting when they are reported as well. If you insist on bowling deliveries with a bent arm, then you should surely accept that you're putting yourself in the firing line to be reported. If we take the Senanayake example, when he was reported Angelo Mathews said:"I think when you travel to some parts of the world and people find a certain bowler difficult to handle they tend to report" source: BBC Sport - England's struggle led to Sachithra Senanayake report - Mathews . This sort of nonsense over reaction (of course Senanayake was found to have been chucking) can only put pressure on the umpires to not to report chuckers which defeats the object of their officiating.
It's not only a matter of the average extension over a series of deliveries, but their variance as well. Currently neither we nor ICC has absolutely any idea on what is the average extension during bowling and the SD of it. Furthermore, on individual basis each bowler has a mean extension and a SD as well. Setting a limit of 15 will not solve the problem IMO. The tolerated percentage of deliveries above a certain limit has to be defined, and if someone breaches the limit, then they should be banned.