Ducking Beamers has a good response to our post on Johan Botha and offspinners in general. Let me elaborate upon what I agreed with the writer and what I disagreed. First, though, go and read it. I will wait.

DB is correct in suggesting that the entire article provides no corroborating evidence for any of the claims. This is a fair argument especially in the context of chucking with respect to spin bowling action. This calls for reading more on the bio-mechanical aspects of the bowling action. I suppose the ICC should have published more information on this. I haven’t read it and should have. Once I do so, I will post another article explaining what I learnt and linking to others. Watch this space.

DB is also correct about Saqlain Mushtaq, who actually is one of the doosra bowlers who didn’t get accused of chucking. Shoaib Malik was the Pakistani bowler who was reported to the ICC. He has since been cleared. Here is a list of international players who have faced allegations of throwing.

When I mentioned “bias” against Murali, I was talking about the “institutions”, specifically the ICC. The ICC seemingly used the best science they had and cleared him. They have to be commended for that. I didn’t think of commentators and former cricket players as an “institution”. Obviously, quite a few people including past cricket players (Bishen Singh Bedi comes to mind) still think Murali chucks. We cannot help that.

I also suggested that the behavior of people like Darrell Hair gives greater credence to allegations of racism. It has only been a short while that apartheid existed in South Africa. And other Western countries have had their struggles with racial relations. It is more than likely that some of the antagonism against Murali comes from a bad place.

But I do have a problem with the theory that Murali’s problems can be entirely attributed to racism. The root cause is that he does have an odd action. And he was only cleared by a scientific analysis, which implies that an umpire or another player could not distinguish such an action from an illegal action using the naked eye. This creates a sort of cognitive dissonance, where you “see” a bowler chucking and you have read that it is perfectly legal. I suppose there could also be a level of envy and disbelief at Murali’s incredible success that contributes to the ongoing murmur about his action.

Also, I don’t think that the racial argument is a good one to use in any case. Either he is throwing or not throwing. End of story. Once you start bringing race (or religion or nationality) into an argument, you lose sight of the facts. And just because a racist says something doesn’t mean that it is false. You have to prove it false.

DB, for some reason, suggests that a bowler would not consciously throw the ball if a chucking allegation could end their careers. Excuse me, but I think that is pretty naive. That would imply that no cheating ever takes place in sports. Cricket had its match fixing scandals. Almost every sport has had doping scandals. I am sure that there are sportspersons who stay clean to avoid getting into trouble, but there will always be people who want to gain any slight advantage they can, even if it means bending or breaking laws. Just look at the Tour de France history of doping.

I remember how, for a brief period of time, at least for me, match fixing created disillusionment with cricket matches. You would always wonder if a weak underdog beat a stronger team, or if there was a strange collapse of the batting order, or if the fielding team seemed a tad lazy. You just didn’t know what was true. And the match fixing scandal was true and it threatened cricketing careers and cricket itself.

In the same way, chucking is a serious problem and has to be dealt with accordingly because it threatens to undermine the integrity of a bowler’s record. The problem is that things are very muddy nowadays. As I noted before, the difference between chucking and a legitimate delivery is not clear to the casual observer. The umpires can report a person to the ICC and the player has to undergo tests.

The question is: How do they make the decision to report? I suppose that it is easier with the major Test-playing nations. But now, international cricket is expanding tremendously with so many countries and so many different forms of cricket. I would guess (without proof, but with a high degree of confidence) that different umpires have different personal standards for making this decision.

So let me explain why we should care about bending the arms within the permissible limit. First, the assumption is that throwing brings some advantage to the bowler. If it didn’t, there is no point in discussing any of this because who cares if the bowler throws or bowls if spin “chiefly depends on wrist and finger movement“?

But if throwing does provide an advantage, then it goes that some unscrupulous bowlers will try to incorporate as much of the throwing action as possible without actually being called for throwing. Some bowlers may be doing this unconsciously as they try to imitate the successful Murali. Since other bowlers do not have Murali’s physical condition, what exactly are they doing?

I am sure that I missed a couple of interesting points. But primarily it boils down to this: When you sit down to watch a game of cricket, you want to be 100% sure that the final result is the outcome of two teams that fought hard and fair. That is why issues like match fixing, ball tampering and chucking allegations are crises: they destroy that confidence. And all cricket fans should be clamouring to demand that we end the drip-drip of such chucking revelations and establish standard regulations and procedures to resolve this.