'Chucking' issue must be taken out of umpires' hands (24 January 1999)

24 January 1999

'Chucking' issue must be taken out of umpires' hands

By Scyld Berry

IT is time to change, not Muttiah Muralitharan's bowling action, but cricket's law on the emotive issue of throwing.

Law 3 presently states that any umpire who is not "entirely satisfied" as to the "absolute fairness" of a delivery shall call no-ball. And you can't blame any umpire, upon seeing Muralitharan for the first time, for not being "entirely satisfied".

This law, however, was framed before television cameras with slow-motion replays were invented. No-balling was up to the naked eye of the individual umpire. Now sophisticated technology gives a better, clearer, picture for a competent panel to analyse - and the ICC Advisory Panel is competent, containing as it does Michael Holding and Kapil Dev - and to judge accordingly.

The last revision of the laws of cricket was in 1980. MCC, as custodians, are updating them for the year 2000 with the help of such experts as Srini Venkataraghavan, the Indian spinner and Test umpire, and Tony Crafter, Australia's director of umpiring.

Crafter is a thoughtful man with a great love of the game. Australian umpires, though, still include some officials who love exercising their authority and having confrontations as much as they do cricket. Throw in the self-righteousness which pervades many sections of Australian cricket - we are the best, therefore we are always right - and some wise-guy was going to call Muralitharan.

It might have been a brave action on Ross Emerson's part if he had called every off-break delivered by Muralit haran yesterday. But to call one ball out of 10, one which was in no manifest way different from the other nine, was a foolish gesture, considering that many better judges than he - and equipped with far more detailed evidence - have found Muralitharan's action permissible. It had to be all or nothing.

In 1994-95 Emerson called Muralitharan when he bowled leg-breaks as well as off-breaks: no other first-class umpire has, or would have, done that.

When England first met Muralitharan, in Colombo in 1992-93 in a Test which was not televised, his action struck my naked eye as that of a dart-thrower aiming for double 20. Since then he has smoothed his action considerably with the coaching of the Australian off-spinner Bruce Yardley.

In any event, it is not his elbow which has made him the second most successful off-spinner in Test history already, it is his amazingly flexible, probably unique wrist, which puts all those extra rotations on the ball.

It is important for the game's well-being that spin-bowling should be encouraged, especially of an exceptional kind. Conventional off-spin has become mundane and almost redundant in modern Test cricket. While blatant throwing must never be tolerated, unconventional and original spin must be allowed its place.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)