The no-ball's sinister hue

Kamran Abbasi's blog on the Cordon recently about Mohammad Amir's right to return set me thinking, again, about that unholy, mucky mess and the impact it has had on the game, nearly five years on.

What is its legacy? For me personally, that question was answered that very evening, as I sat up late watching the fourth Australia-India Test from Sydney.

It was answered when Ryan Harris, in the 30th and 32nd overs of India's first innings, delivered massive front-foot no-balls. Upon the second, Mark Taylor was unable to hide his shock, chuntering his surprise away and treating the oversteps as if Harris had caused minor offence to his grandmother. I felt equally perturbed.

This is no attempt to tar Harris with the same filthy brush as Amir or Mohammad Asif. Their no-balls were intentional, his weren't. Indeed, can you think of a cricketer or a bloke less likely to intentionally hinder his team, whether that team be Australia - whose Southern Cross he has tattooed on his forearm - or some newfangled franchise whose pyjamas he dons for a fortnight of four-over stints.

It just ain't Harris: mine and Taylor's reaction was nothing to do with Harris but is about a wider point to do with the front-foot no-ball in the second decade of the 21st century, and the impact the 2010 incident has had on my own perception of the sport.

I remember there being loads of no-balls growing up. It may be my memory failing me, but whether playing or watching cricket, the front- foot no-ball always seemed to feature. Every team I played in had that seamer whose attempts to find the line with his trotter were akin to a drunkard trying to change a tyre in pitch darkness, while my memory of Andrew Caddick, one of my favourite bowlers, is filled with his vast shanks hammering down beyond the whitewash, lengthy levers flailing.

I'm sure that's unfair, of course. There were plenty of theories about how to eradicate no-balls from one's game but they rarely seemed to work, or matter that much; just as a batsman's field is fluid when he is in the nets, so the front line is for the bowler, even with an umpire watching keenly.

However many no-balls there are, whoever's bowling them, however clean their motive, the sight of that surprise right arm flaying out and piercing shout going up will always leave me feeling a little uneasy

Plenty of great bowlers had no-ball problems. At Headingley in 1981, when England skittled Australia for a clean Nelson to win the match, their 36 overs produced 14 no-balls, with Bob Willis, who took eight wickets, the offender-in-chief. In the next great Ashes series on English soil, in 2005, with Australia coming within a whisker of their target of 282 at Edgbaston, Andrew Flintoff bowled 13 of the things in his 22 overs. Across the series, he bowled 70 in nine innings.

This all created a climate that made no-balls seemed perfectly innocent, akin to a knock-on in rugby or a bad first touch resulting in the ball rolling out of play on the football field. They just cost a run and, at worst and only very occasionally, a wicket. It's a commentary cliché, but I've definitely seen bowlers deliver a no-ball when they were trying too hard - Flintoff and Harris (two of the most gifted triers I've seen) for a start, as well as Ben Stokes, who memorably had Brad Haddin caught off a front-footer in his first spell in Test cricket in Adelaide, in 2013. Careless? Annoying? Unprofessional? A bit village? All of the above. Anything more? No, not really.

That was the case until 2010. After Amir, Asif and Butt, however, the front foot no-ball has no innocence, and has morphed into something rather sinister. On a base level, all that keeps a minor cricketing offence from being a serious criminal offence is a bit of intent and a bath full of bank notes. The front-foot no-ball is the gateway to the game for the spot-fixer. Intentionally bowling a no-ball is the simplest means of conning the game of its integrity and ruining it as a true contest and spectacle. For me, the front-foot no-ball - especially the big'un - will forever be linked to that fourth Test at Lord's in 2010.

The sordid situation has obviously been aggravated since by Sreesanth and Co in 2012, but of course there are other completely different ways in which the no-ball has changed in recent times. The white-ball free hit means it is taxed more heavily and is a greater cricketing crime, while umpires' wandering eyes mean perhaps half are currently being missed.

Seeing the no-ball called less often almost certainly contributes to the increased shock felt when one is called. Undoubtedly the most irritating side effect of the umpires' fear of calling in live action, though, are the replays required if a wicket is taken - not fair on the batsman, stood like a lemon, the bowler, whose celebration is interrupted, or the fans, who are in equal limbo.

However many no-balls there are, whoever's bowling them, however clean their motive and however they are called, the sight of that surprise right arm flaying out and piercing shout going up will always leave me feeling a little uneasy. The Sreesanth incident exacerbated it but the no-ball's life has a yawning chasm dividing the before and the after; the age of innocence ended in August 2010 - they're sinister things now.