Sports
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Australian factor After weeks of speculation, when Sri Lanka's champion bowler Muttiah Muralitharan spelled his mind out to the Sri Lanka Cricket authorities and announced that he is not joining the rest of the band on the tour of Australia, it did not raise any eyebrows. They knew it was coming. Unlike what they did to the England captain Michael Vaughan (during and prior to his last tour to that country) or the Pakistani speed merchant Sohaib Aktar when he was bidding for the fastest ball in cricket along with the Australian Brett Lee and many others before, persons other than the cricket columnists, past cricketers and hired hands from other nations, some one else by the name of John Howard had joined the circus. Thanks to him Murali's decision not to tour Australia was made easy. What was the hidden agenda? During his last Test tour of Australia Muralitharan in two tests had bowled 92 overs and taken three wickets at the cost of 348 runs with an average of 116 runs per wicket. So what's the big deal? If he is the bowler that this record speaks of, no one would batter an eye-lid about his arrival. At the same time, during his last two tours to that country, Umpires Darryl Hair and Ross Emerson jumped the gun and called him for throwing. It was only a battle launched on the field by his then skipper Arjuna Ranatunge and the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (a much better name for that institution any day) off the field, along with a team of doctors who went on to prove his deformity and saved the day for him to carry on. On seeing the final result, one can come to different conclusions. There is no question the Australians are extremely competitive and very cleaver at forecasting. At a very early stage they would have known that Muralitharan would come to be a threat to many a Test batsman in the near future. So, they thought of nipping it in the bud. But, their calculations went wrong and Muralitharan lived to fight on. Undeterred by what happened Muralitharan battled along. However when it came to Australia's tour of Sri Lanka earlier this year and Sri Lanka were steamrolling over the Englishmen (Though the final result did speak of only a 1-0 victory) there started the old whining again. By this time, Murali was in his late four hundreds and for Australia Shane Warne was billed to make a comeback from his one-year drug ban. Warne too was about a tail ahead of Murali to become the first to reach the second bowler to capture 500 Test wickets and then surpass the effort by Courtney Walsh of taking a record haul of 519 wickets. During this tour Warne beat Muralitharan to the 500 wickets and a few days later Match Referee Chris Broad, who himself had a dubious past as a cricketer while playing for England, reported doubts about Murali's "doosra". At this point a few questions arise. Chris Broad was given the Sri Lanka-Australia series under strange circumstances with the ICC bringing him in instead of the elected referee for the series Mike Proctor-replacing the latter after the one-day series. Not stopping at that, Broad is given Sri Lanka's next series, which was against Zimbabwe and another report against Muralitharan would have sent him into the sin-bin for a period of one year. Only a loud protest from the SLC saw the ICC replacing Broad with Proctor again. But, not to be outdone the ICC once against had Broad lined up for the Austra-Sri Lanka return Test series in Australia. (What ever Broad or the others had in mind during this tour, can be cast aside, and they can now enjoy the lovely late winter climate in Darwin and Cairns). Muralitharan after that report by Broad underwent Tests with Australian scientist Bruce Elliot and adjusted his arm from 14 degrees to 10 degrees while the accepted level for spin bowling by the ICC now stands at 5 degrees. Meanwhile somewhere September 2003, the International Cricket Council came with an Illegal Actions Review Procedure, to consider various issues relating to the present ICC procedure for dealing with bowlers who are reported with suspect bowling actions. The General Manager of the ICC consulted Dr. Paul Hurrion from the United Kingdom and Marc Portus from Australia, both human movement scientists with extensive knowledge and specific experience in the subject of illegal bowling actions. In the aftermath what happened? The ICC GM recommended to its Cricket Committee to increase the Level of Tolerance to 15 degrees for all bowlers. Alas!
What ever happened to that report? Who was instrumental in holding
it back? |
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