And here we go again....

[C_C]

Almost sounds like a way of saying well they chuck why cant we.

It is credible- consistency must be followed in any situation... personally it boggles my mind that someone like Blessing Mahwire would be referred for chucking but Lee isnt...when his effort ball seems like a blatant chuck to MANY people.

 

[C_C]

Spot on Dinu...spot on...By current rules, NO BODY is a chucker-yet. By old rules, mcGrath,,Holding, Kapil, Botham,lillee, Marshall, etc. are ALL chuckers if Murali is a chucker.
There is evidence for this.

 

[Scallywag]

i've met broad and found him incredibly dull....plus i dont think Broad (who is a drinking buddy of some members of the OZ team) should really be allowed to officiate in the first place- you cannot be a judge when you have ties to one of the defendants/competitiors.

You have met Broad and you think he's dull, well he must be an idiot then if you found him dull.

Broad is a drinking buddy of the Australians is he (lets not forget that the Sri Lankans withdrew that made up unfounded rumour), dont you think umpires should be allowed to associate with cricketers or just Australians.


Honestly C_C you make the stupidest of claims and think of the most paranoid scenarios.

 

[Scallywag]

if he has a new action, he must be referred- but then again, the standard must be consistent- if Harby is getting reported because he has a new action, everytime a bowler comes with a new action, he must be reported as well...
.

Harby was not reported for a new action he was reported for chucking, if another bowler changes his action he does not have to be tested unless he is called for chucking. Just because you change actions it does not mean you have to be reported unless the umpire thinks you are chucking.

Is that hard to understand.

 

[C_C]

dont you think umpires should be allowed to associate with cricketers or just Australians.

Are judges allowed to associate with the defendant ?
I can accept association as logn as it isnt towards one team/block alone.....

You have met Broad and you think he's dull, well he must be an idiot then if you found him dull.

to me...he is..as simple as that.

Harby was not reported for a new action he was reported for chucking, if another bowler changes his action he does not have to be tested unless he is called for chucking. Just because you change actions it does not mean you have to be reported unless the umpire thinks you are chucking.

But since umpires cannot tell with the naked eye, any change in action should be referred to the committee...

I actually think that the best case scenario would be the way IOC/IAAF regulate doping...atleast along those lines, if not that rigorous.... players should be tested randomly for chucking...including every single one who turns the arm, irrespective of 'reputation'.

 

[SJS]

high speed cameras have found out that 99% of bowlers flex their elbow when bowling. so it's unfair of u to just point ur finger at the above mentioned players. Or maybe u just want to ignore that fact because the chucking list include some of ur favourite players.

I did not want to go into this but here goes

Do you play cricket ?

If yes do you bowl?

If yes, have you tried to throw instead of bowling ?/Have you seen others throwing instead of bowling ?

If yes, can you tell the difference ?

If yes, then tell me how ?

This is where it stood beofre this mumbo-jumbo which has lots of issues that I can go into b8ut should really be the subject of an article.

A bowler, if he throws, can be seen by the onlooker, including the square leg umpire, to be throwing. Thats why the umpire was asked to call, "No ball"

NOW. It is possible for there being deliveries that may be very marginally "jerked" (for want of a better word) so, to resolve this issue, since it could not be 100% verified whether the bowler "threw" (remember we are not talking the present flexing terminology), the umpires were asked that if they were not sure beyond doubt, OR, in other words, even if they had some doubt about the delivery, they SHOULD CALL !!

Thios was like the benefit of doubt in reverse.

This did not mean that the bowlers who were called were all throwing. It just meant that there was a doubt in the mind of the umpire. This was enough for the bowlers to try and "smoothen"(again for want of a better word) the action. This would have worked fine but for a major glich.

The umpires belonged to the home team and invariably, the umpires who dared to call for throwing were home team umpires and the bowlers called were visitors. Remember this is what happened, invariably not necessarily always and certainly is not mentioned here to cast aspersions on the umpires.

This led to a furore from the teams whose bowlers were called. What was not accepted was that the bowlers, invariably HAD been spotted as having "dodgy" actions even in their own countries but were not checked in domestic cricket and now being strike bowlers, the teams did not want to lose them. So blkaming the unmpires and their intentions became a more and more prevalent form of response.

MCC and later ICC with its penchant for trying to please everyone (and managing nothing as a consequence) kept on dilly dallying on the matter until we came to Mr Muralitharan who bacame not just a controversial bowler because of his action BUT also, potentially, the biggest wicket taker in the history of the game.

The stakes became even bigger and ICC started looking for a bigger carpet to brush the sh** under.

By now, with Murali continuing to take literally, 100's of wickets with his dubious bowling action, bowlers with similar action mushroomed. Particularly in the subcontinent where Saqlain and Harbhajan were two oustanding off spinners (remember it is virtually impossible to throw a leg spin) and others were coming out of the junior levels fast. It was an epidemic.

With the sub continent calling the shots as far as the finances of the cricket world, ICC pushed its tail further into its hind legs and took refuge behind Sri Sunil Gavaskar and his technical committee who came with a fanatastic (and technically proven) theory that every bowler flexed his elbow so it was okay as long as we fixed a limit to how much should be allowed. That limit was fixed as 15 degrees the argument being that this is what can be noticed by the eye.

Seems good enough. Doesnt it but it has fatal flaws.

1. If it is determined that 15 degrees and above is the limit beyond which the umpire CAN determine a throw by looking at it, why not just allow him to call when he sees what appears to him to be a throw.

2. But no. They were not sure. They would like the bowler to go back and have the angle checked. Why ? Does it mean that the logic of (1) above was not as sound as it was made out to be ? Certainly appears so. So, it is not possible to say, with a naked eye that a bowler is flexing beyond 15 degrees or no. Then what did the umpires see, to report him ? They saw what appears to them a suspect action!! Aha. But wasnt this exactly what they were supposed to see earlier too and instead of reporting to a committee, they would call "NO BALL" But no that wouldnt be "technical" enough now, would it ?

3. So. The bowler can throw, not be called, get a wicket(or more), win a test. And play another two tests in the 21 days (I think thats the period) maybe win some more matches for his team and then go to the lab for an examination !! Great.

4. What would have happened if we had stuck to the earlier law, the bowler would be called (remember it doesnt mean he is cheating), and he could go back and bowl again as long as he did not bowl the offending deliveries, he could bowl as much as he wanted, take wickets if he could and that was it.

5. There is no way to reproduce the deliveries that were bowled in the match which raised the doubt, in the lab. So. How is it going to be fairer. He may flex less (or more maybe though I doubt it) and lead to wrong conclusions. Either allowing an offender to continue or banning someone for 12 months when all that was required was to stop him, in a match situation, from bowling deliveries that did not pass muster. Whats wrong with that? Yes the umpire can make a mistake. But we all know from experience (ask any top cricketer you may know and he will confirm) that a throw can be seen and invariably when a bowler is called, it is when he throws or his action is as bad as can be and I have not come across a single case where the umpire is the only one who thinks a bowler is throwing.

So why do I think Harbhajan and Murali throw ? Because of two reasons.
1. By the old definition it would be a throw and every umpire in the world (who had the b****) would call them for throwing.

2. I have tried bowling the doosra and have talked to other spinners at Junior level who are openly experimenting with it in the clubs of Delhi and none of them is able to bowl it without throwing. They know it, their coaches know it but now that Harbhajan is doing it, no one is bothering to stop them. If they can do it and control their line and length it is a big wicket taking delivery and thats all that matters.

If the idea of this law is, to allow this type of bowling in order to make the battle a bit more even between bat and ball, let the ICC come forward and say so. Let them say they are legalising chucking to an extent as a process of evolution PLUS let them find a better method to monitor, whatever law they frame, in real time, on the ground and at the time it is broken. Not weeks later in some far off lab with the whole world indulging in a ointless debate on thye rights and wrongs of something that a technician sitting in a lab somewhere will finally decide !!

 

[dinu23]

random testing is good idea, but can the ICC implement such a scheme, is the problem.

 

[Gangster]

1. By the old definition it would be a throw and every umpire in the world (who had the b****) would call them for throwing.

By the old definition, you would be shot to death if you deigned to step onto a cricket pitch in India. Shall we revert to that as well? Or would you care to look up the word "progress" in the dictionary?

 

[C_C]

SJS- i dont agree with your viewpoint there.

One critical flaw in your argument is that it does NOT take into account stuff like illusions created due to permanent flexion in the elbow or hypermobile wrists(both of which Murali has) or deformities like Hyperextension, which is not throwing.

All the 15 degree rule implies is that it is impossible to spot ANY irregularity with the bowling action.
However, irregularity does NOT mean throwing... it can be a combination of illusions or unique physiology which does not violate the chucking law.
And it is explicitly clear that the umpire MAY NOT call a bowler unless he is throwing.
Referring him to get checked out is FAR safer and comprehensive process than relying on the eyes of pentagenarians, hexagenerians and heptagenerians...

Again, you seem to be arguing predominantly to maintain the arbitary 'sanctity' of the umpiring job rather than the best solution possible scenario.

On an unrelated topic, i do notice that there is a direct correleation between age and resistance to change...as in the older a person is, the more deaf he/she is to reasoning and more inclined towards the traditions and norms of their era.....wonder what is the psychological explanation to that.

 

[SJS]

The problem we have now is that the ICC has lumbered the cricketing world with a law that can only be applied retrospectively (as in Harbhajan's case). What is clearly needed is a camera that can immediately ascertain a bowler's degree of flexion after the delivery. I don't know if such apparatus is available as of now (it can obviously be done, but I guess speed may be the problem), but the law as it currently stands can find a player guilty of chucking after the event when his performance is already in the record books.

Is India's win to be asterisked (*Harbhajan guilty of throwing) if the committee decides he was over the tolerance level?

EXACTLY !!

Thats called hitting the nail on its blooming head

 

[marc71178]

ok, back to topic.
--
so this means that broad doesn't trust the biomechanical engineers who thought harbhajan's action was fine? and is going back to the same people?

or does broad think that harbhajan's action has changed in 15 days?

Well if you read what he said about it, he didn't see anything in the 1 innings but did in the other.

And it wasn't just Broad.

 

[Vroomfondel]

Well if you read what he said about it, he didn't see anything in the 1 innings but did in the other.

And it wasn't just Broad.

I read what he said, and I'm not saying he's making it up because he's an aussie drinking buddy or whatever. It's just that what he says makes sense only in the context of Harbhajan deliberately and/or significantly changing his action over the last month or so (since he got called last time). Since he was cleared (including his doosra btw) by Bruce Elliot and crew, there are only two possibilities --

a) they got it wrong
b) harby changed his action for testing

If a), then why are we sending him back to them, and how does it affect all the other bowlers cleared or not cleared by the panel.

If b), and it's so easy for Harbhajan to change his action under scrutiny (which is think is false btw), then what's the point of jumping through the hoops again -- we'll reach the same conclusion unless some fundamentally different testing occurs, and it doesn't seem like it will...

Does that make sense marc?

 

[SJS]

I read what he said, and I'm not saying he's making it up because he's an aussie drinking buddy or whatever. It's just that what he says makes sense only in the context of Harbhajan deliberately and/or significantly changing his action over the last month or so (since he got called last time). Since he was cleared (including his doosra btw) by Bruce Elliot and crew, there are only two possibilities --

a) they got it wrong
b) harby changed his action for testing

If a), then why are we sending him back to them, and how does it affect all the other bowlers cleared or not cleared by the panel.

If b), and it's so easy for Harbhajan to change his action under scrutiny (which is think is false btw), then what's the point of jumping through the hoops again -- we'll reach the same conclusion unless some fundamentally different testing occurs, and it doesn't seem like it will...

Does that make sense marc?

Why do you assume that the bowler, even if he wants, can maintain the same degree of flex every time he bowls a ball. The flex in the case of the doosra has been knoiwn to vary between 10 and 20 degrees. I am not saying its intentional. Its may just be that every time he delivers the ball, he will get a different level of flex.

In such a case, where is the surity that just because he got, say 14 degrees at the time of last check, he will not get 16 degrees in a match situation. It needs less than that for a violation.

This is why this law is so damn difficult to administer.

 

[dinu23]

I read what he said, and I'm not saying he's making it up because he's an aussie drinking buddy or whatever. It's just that what he says makes sense only in the context of Harbhajan deliberately and/or significantly changing his action over the last month or so (since he got called last time). Since he was cleared (including his doosra btw) by Bruce Elliot and crew, there are only two possibilities --

a) they got it wrong
b) harby changed his action for testing

If a), then why are we sending him back to them, and how does it affect all the other bowlers cleared or not cleared by the panel.

If b), and it's so easy for Harbhajan to change his action under scrutiny (which is think is false btw), then what's the point of jumping through the hoops again -- we'll reach the same conclusion unless some fundamentally different testing occurs, and it doesn't seem like it will...

Does that make sense marc?

the testing is done while an umpire is watching the bowler in action, to check whether there is any change in the action.

 

[Vroomfondel]

Why do you assume that the bowler, even if he wants, can maintain the same degree of flex every time he bowls a ball. The flex in the case of the doosra has been knoiwn to vary between 10 and 20 degrees. I am not saying its intentional. Its may just be that every time he delivers the ball, he will get a different level of flex.

In such a case, where is the surity that just because he got, say 14 degrees at the time of last check, he will not get 16 degrees in a match situation. It needs less than that for a violation.

This is why this law is so damn difficult to administer.

So basically you're saying that the biomechanical testing is not comprehensive and that Bruce Elliot and co. aren't competent enough to ask Harby to bowl enough doosras to get a fair idea of over-flexing or inconsistency in flexing?

 

[Vroomfondel]

the testing is done while an umpire is watching the bowler in action, to check whether there is any change in the action.

If you read the guidelines, they require testing by a panel of biomechanical experts, not umpires. and they aren't looking for change in action, they're looking for the 15 degree flex.

"Within a period of 21 days, the bowler will be required to work with an independent member of the ICC’s Human Movement Specialist panel. This will include the filming of his action under laboratory conditions and using latest technology opto-reflective techniques"

http://www.icc-cricket.com/icc/rules/reporting_process.html

 

[SJS]

So basically you're saying that the biomechanical testing is not comprehensive and that Bruce Elliot and co. aren't competent enough to ask Harby to bowl enough doosras to get a fair idea of over-flexing or inconsistency in flexing?

They can ask him to bowl and they will be able to measure the flex but there is no way to determine whether , when he bowled in the match he bowled withy greater or lesser flex !

So their conclusions could be misleading. No fault of theirs.

Unless a machine can test at the ground this is a post mortem, and that too not necessarily of the same body !!

 

[SJS]

It is not difficult/uncommon for actions to change. Most people who swing the ball in the air have experienced, at some stage, a sudden loss in their capacity to move the ball in the air. Invariably it is due to some minor change in bowling action. At times so small that a bowler or a coach are not able to find out what it is.

On top of that is the problem of the flex angle being different from ball to ball. The difference could be a couple of degrees but in a marginal case, as most corrected actions are going to be, this may be enough to cross the rubicon.

 

[C_C]

SJS- in the bowling tests, they dont just ask you to bowl once...you bowl a dozen or more overs in same vein as you do in match ( presonnel and equipment is in place to ensure this) and they look at BOTH the average AND the highest/lowest flexion levels.... If you have less than .5% or so ( that is, if Canadian practices are similar to aussie) deliveries above flexion levels ( that is one delivery outta ever 33.3 overs!) then it is discarded as aberration, as it is statistically insignificant...but if 99.5% or 99% of your deliveries are within the 15 deg range- both the higher marker AND the mean, then there is enough data to conclude that you dont flex above the limit in 99-99.5% of cases.
And you know well enough as anyone that .5 % or 1 % of deliveries of EVERY SINGLE BOWLER can be classified as a chuck.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

My problem is with what oit has achieved. I have written extensively on this before and dont want to repeat myself accept to say that any law which can not be enforced on the field of play is not worth the piece of paper it is written upon. This 15 degree mumbo-jumbo falls in that category.

Absolutely dead on the money in my book.