Give pause a chance, plead bowlers

For the first time since the ICC asked match officials to use their discretion to decide if the bowlers' pause is unfair play, those at the centre of the increased scrutiny have decided to speak out in an attempt to clear their names and show that they each have perfectly innocent reasons for doing what they do.

Mohammed Hafeez
Let me ask you this: have you ever stopped what you were doing because something profound occurred to you? Take the example of Archimedes, a personal hero of mine, whose experiments to determine the volume of an object with an irregular shape inspired me to take up slow bowling. Now Archie, as I like to call him, wasn't exactly in the middle of one of his experiments when he famously received his "Eureka" moment and ran, tumescent with newfound knowledge, naked into the streets. No, he was having a relaxing moment in his bathtub when the revelation came to him.

That's right, he wasn't doing much of anything. Likewise, we spinners have our Eureka moments too, times when, all of a sudden, we know exactly how we are going to negotiate a dismissal.

Sometimes this epiphany comes not during the act of delivering the ball but in the moments before it, that's all. That's why I pause, anyway, to let the profundity of the moment sink in. Hey, they don't call me the Professor for nothing. Class dismissed.

R Ashwin
People think I'm trying to hoodwink the batsmen because they only ever see the pause during a match, on TV. But the truth is, pausing before delivering is actually an affliction I have no control over, and which regularly manifests itself in other aspects of my life as well. For example, not many know that before I became a cricketer, I was fired from a succession of pizza delivery jobs because I could never get the food to the customer while it was still hot. No, it isn't easy being me. And so I hope the next time you see a bowler pausing before delivering the ball, you'll think twice before rushing to form a judgement about him.

Marlon Samuels
I don't pause before I deliver the ball. Who told you I do that? Did Bravo say I do that? He did, didn't he?

Suresh Raina
My nephew always did tell me that good things come to people who wait. I'm just applying that logic on the cricket pitch, that's all. The longer the batsman has to wait during my pause, the better the delivery he gets. At least that's what my nephew tells me.

Saeed Ajmal
The truth is, the pause in my delivery stride is a congenital defect. You can ask my mother, she'll tell you. Incidentally, I myself was a delayed delivery, a C-section baby, so it shouldn't come as such a surprise that I do the same to the ball sometimes. Anyway, the first thing mother asked the obstetrician when she saw that I'd been born with a pause in my delivery stride was whether I'd be able to lead a normal life, and the doc smiled noncommittally. I'm pretty sure that if and when they test me for pausing before delivering the ball, they'll confirm that it is indeed due to a defect at birth and not to any malice on my part. But it also won't surprise me in the least if it is subsequently found that most bowlers have a pause in their delivery stride at some point, and the law is changed again to allow for at least an acceptable measure of pause.

Ravindra Jadeja
Look, you would pause too if you caught sight of yourself on the big screen and saw that your hair was slightly out of place or one of the points of your moustache was drooping just a bit unmanfully as you were running up to the crease. Cut me some slack here.

Sachithra Senanayake
If anything, batsmen should be thanking me for pausing when I do. The longer it takes you to deliver the ball, the more time a batsman has to look for any possible intrusion into his field of vision behind the bowler's arm, and then do what all batsmen like best about their job: pull out of their stance just as the bowler is about to deliver. So yeah, I delay my delivery to better help the batsman delay my delivery.

Sunil Narine
It's true that sometimes I pause before letting go of the ball, but it isn't intentional. It's just that nerves get the better of me sometimes, right as I'm about to deliver the ball, and I freeze, especially when I get to wondering if anyone's going to suddenly call me for chucking. Silly, I know.