Nipping problems in the bud

Players at the Under-19 World Cup in Colombo are having their bowling actions filmed and assessed in order to try and spot any problems earlier enough so that they can be corrected. Dr Marc Portus, a human movement specialist with the Bowling Review Group (BRG), is travelling around the grounds collating footage.

Javagal Srinath has also made a brief visit to Colombo in his capacity as a member of the BRG. He and Portus were part of the committee that upheld Shabbir Ahmed's 12-month ban after he had appealed his case to the ICC.

"It is more a preemptive move [being in Sri Lanka], to try and catch the actions while the bowlers are still young enough to work with," Portus told Cricinfo during the match between Pakistan and Bangladesh. "We haven't come out here with any blacklist of players to look for, our remit is just to watch as many as we can and report back. If there is anyone we think might have suspect action we will tell the board that it is probably worth looking at them."

Bowling actions are now assessed around the 15-degree limit imposed by the ICC. South Africa's Johan Botha is the latest bowler to fall foul of the regulations, having his international abruptly halted when he was found to breach the limit following a report made during the third Test against Australia at Sydney.

The new limit has come in for some criticism, opponents saying it could allow players with suspect actions to continue playing. However, Portus says that spotting 15 degrees of straightening is almost impossible to pick up without technology - in other words there would have been no questions raised about the action before this new ruling.

"The thing is with the 15 degrees, is that it's actually a very small margin. With the naked eye you probably wouldn't be able to detect someone with a straightening of that amount, in other words the action would look fine. If an action appears dodgy to the naked eye it is generally going to be well passed that 15-degree margin, I've seen bowlers hit 30."

Portus explained that the ruling helps to accommodate the natural movement of the arm in bowling, something that doesn't give any additional advantage. "Even the players who appear to have a completely sound action come up as something around seven, eight, nine or even 10 degrees. That's really how the whole system started. Over about 18 months we filmed 20 bowlers in different match conditions and we produced 3D images and found that all of them were straightening to some extent. It's a very rare occasion when it came up as zero or one.

He also admitted that the development of the doosra is making the job harder, as it is very difficult to build up information. "The problem at the moment is we lack the match analysis of the delivery. When we do analysis in the field there is a much greater error factor, whereas in a control environment that is greatly reduce. But when bowlers perform in laboratories they know why they are there.

"We try to reproduce match conditions but it is very difficult. You can't recreate the situation of a final day in a Test when you are trying to win a match for your country. We are actually trying to develop technology at the moment, with the ICC, to allow us to come up with accurate 3D numbers from game situations, but it is a few years away yet."