Elliott passes on key information to Sri Lankan board

The Sri Lankan cricket board has been advised of the results of Muttiah Muralitharan's suspect-bowling-action assessment, but they are yet to release the details publicly. Bruce Elliott, the biomechanist at the University of Western Australia who supervised last week's tests, said on Monday that he had passed on the main findings to the Sri Lankan board.

Elliott said he would complete a written report later this week and send it to the board. "They know what the numbers are," Elliott told Reuters in a telephone interview from Perth. "Just the pure numbers at the elbow. That's the key to the issue, I suppose, but that's where we are with that.

"I don't know what the Sri Lankan board will be doing. I would hope they would tell me that they would let us make it public, or they would make it public. Now really it's up to the Sri Lankan cricket board and the ICC."

Muralitharan's bowling was assessed after he was reported by Chris Broad, the match referee, during the recent Sri Lanka-Australia Test series. The legality of Murali's doosra, which spins in the opposite direction to his stock ball, had been called into question.

Elliott's team analysed data relating to six doosra deliveries from a test session in Perth during which Muralitharan wore only reflective markers on his upper body.

The Sri Lankan board is responsible for reviewing and, if necessary, remedying Muralitharan's bowling action with the assistance of an ICC-appointed expert before submitting a report to the ICC within six weeks of Broad's announcement on March 28.

Muralitharan's action has been the source of controversy ever since he was no-balled for throwing by Darrell Hair in a Test match at Melbourne in December 1995. He was later cleared by the ICC after biomechanical analysis - again at the University of Western Australia - which concluded that his bent-arm action created the "optical illusion" of throwing.