This increased scrutiny of bowling actions follows an ICC Cricket Committee directive encouraging umpires and referees to report suspect actions. Geoff Allardice, Dave Richardson's successor as the ICC's General Manager for Cricket, basically admitted that the ICC had not kept a check on illegal actions in the international game as well as it might have. There are many slippages in play here. There is a difference between a 'suspect action' and an 'illegal action'. The idea of a 'suspect action' is a new one which the Laws of Cricket are yet to catch up with.
As is the case with DRS, the elaborate apparatus which governs the legality of bowling actions today is the result of authority being withdrawn from the umpires on the field. With DRS, the allegation against Umpires was that they were incompetent, often with lethal consequences to the outcome of a game, or even to the fate of a career. With throwing, Umpires have been saddled with the far more serious responsibility of making a moral judgment. Throwing is considered cheating. Curiously, a front foot no ball is not. Neither, more tellingly, is the back foot no ball.
The 'suspect action' was born when the ICC decided that it would no longer enforce Law 24.2 on the field. Despite what the law currently says, an umpire has not called a bowler for throwing since the year 2000. Umpires report bowlers for having bowling actions which they suspect are illegal, either for all types of deliveries or for specific types of deliveries. Much to their dismay, the first few players they reported returned with an all clear. Even worse, the few who did get suspended pending remedial work had their bans overturned swiftly.
It has become a truism in cricket today that an illegal action is one in which the flex is more than 15 degrees. This is true to an extent but is false and worse, backwards, in a much more significant sense. First, some terminology must be clarified. The elbow is 'flexed'. This result in the 'extension' of the arm. This is illegal according to Law 24.2, without caveat. It turns out however, that some flex is inevitable in any bowling action. It also turns out that in the case of some people, the elbow joint is more flexible than others (hyper-extension). This is to say that it permits flexing beyond zero degrees.
This second point is crucial. It is crucial not only because it affects the way the flex is measured, but it because it affects the very identification of a suspect action. The 15 degree threshold, which so many people seem to hold so dear exists only because this is the angle at which flex can be identified by the naked eye.
In the case of a player whose elbow joint is hyper-extended, often along more than one axis. For such a player, an allowance has to be made to account for this hyper-extension, since it is involuntary. As a result, the 15 degree threshold is calculated and many bowlers who appear to extend their arms (or flex their elbows) when delivering the ball, may actually do so within the limit.
The system of analysing a bowler's action is a reasonable one. Some have argued that bowlers don't use their match actions during these reviews. This is an obvious problem and one which is accounted for by analysts by comparing the action during the review to video of the action during in matchplay.
What is less reasonable is the decision to take the decision out of the Umpire's hand. The cricketing commentariat is singularly cynical about umpires. This has resulted, in the last 10 years, in authority being taken away from umpires and given to elaborate technical assemblies which rarely do better, but give everyone concerned some assurance that they've gotten a fair hearing. Umpires have been reduced to messengers. Their job now is to convey a player's disagreement with a decision they have made to one of their colleagues. Their job is to convey a suspicion based on what they see on the field to a technical bowling review. They are no longer the final authority. They have become conduits for suspicion. Suspected LBWs, suspected actions, suspected catches, suspected run outs. Underneath all this lie suspected, undermined umpires.
The case of bowling actions is especially interesting. Throwing is a technical problem. There is no evidence to suggest that throwing gives a bowler an advantage. Throwing a ball and bowling it are simply two categorically different ways of delivering it, much like a catapult and a canon are two different ways of launching missiles. Being a sport which by definition involves arbitrary rules, cricket disallows one and permits the other. It also disallows overstepping. It disallows more than 2 fielders behind square on the leg side. All of these things are technical violations, much like throwing.
The game has itself and Arjuna Ranatunga to blame for the mess it finds itself in with respect to throwing. He dared the game to sanction him when Mutthiah Muralitharan was called (a reasonable umpiring decision in my view), and the sport blinked and gave in. If more bowlers get reported and banned, it may have some effect. It would be so much the better if umpires would simply call bowlers on the field, and the commentariat would get with the program and see it just as they would see a no-ball call for overstepping. The suspension pending technical review can follow. But imagine how much of a deterrent it would be if teams knew that any bowler with a suspect action would be called on the field.
Do teams select bowlers who have problems with front foot no-balls? Do teams select bowlers who have problems with running on the pitch? Law 24.2 recommends more or less the same course of action in the case of throwing as Law 42 does in the case of running on the pitch. Why is this not followed? Why, instead of letting an umpire say "I think that was thrown", does Cricket merely allow an umpire to report a bowler after a match, often with the result that the umpire has to stand in the very next match and watch the same bowler bowl with impunity? Umpires Gould and Oxenford reported Ajmal after Galle, and had to watch him bowl 79 overs in the next match at SSC using an action which, as we now know, was ridiculously illegal. Ajmal was flexing his elbow more the double the permitted extent. It was the equivalent of Ajmal bowling with his front foot 3 inches beyond the bowling crease for an entire Test match and the umpires being able to do nothing about it.
It is a good thing that the ICC's Cricket Committee has encourage umpires to report bowlers for throwing. Perhaps they ought to take the next logical step and encourage umpires to expect the complete backing of the ICC when it comes to running the game. Geoff Allardice's committee ought to tell umpires that they are no longer mere transmitters of suspicion, but are the experts - the masters of the situation and that the ICC's backing will be total. The technical review ought to exist to inform umpires. Take the Muralitharan episode. Ideally, Murali would have been called. His action would have been tested. The point about hyper-extension and the biomechanical point about the inevitability of some amount of flexion would have been made. Armed with all this information, do you think a professional Test Umpire on the ICC's Elite Panel would continue to call Muralitharan for throwing?
It is a fact, even in the age of a technical review, that an illegal action is one which looks illegal to the naked eye. That is the starting point. This is an event which occurs on the field. It has to be indicated there. Secret suspicion undermines both the umpire and the player.
It has become a truism in cricket today that an illegal action is one in which the flex is more than 15 degrees. This is true to an extent but is false and worse, backwards, in a much more significant sense. First, some terminology must be clarified. The elbow is 'flexed'. This result in the 'extension' of the arm. This is illegal according to Law 24.2, without caveat. It turns out however, that some flex is inevitable in any bowling action. It also turns out that in the case of some people, the elbow joint is more flexible than others (hyper-extension). This is to say that it permits flexing beyond zero degrees.
This second point is crucial. It is crucial not only because it affects the way the flex is measured, but it because it affects the very identification of a suspect action. The 15 degree threshold, which so many people seem to hold so dear exists only because this is the angle at which flex can be identified by the naked eye.
In the case of a player whose elbow joint is hyper-extended, often along more than one axis. For such a player, an allowance has to be made to account for this hyper-extension, since it is involuntary. As a result, the 15 degree threshold is calculated and many bowlers who appear to extend their arms (or flex their elbows) when delivering the ball, may actually do so within the limit.
The system of analysing a bowler's action is a reasonable one. Some have argued that bowlers don't use their match actions during these reviews. This is an obvious problem and one which is accounted for by analysts by comparing the action during the review to video of the action during in matchplay.
What is less reasonable is the decision to take the decision out of the Umpire's hand. The cricketing commentariat is singularly cynical about umpires. This has resulted, in the last 10 years, in authority being taken away from umpires and given to elaborate technical assemblies which rarely do better, but give everyone concerned some assurance that they've gotten a fair hearing. Umpires have been reduced to messengers. Their job now is to convey a player's disagreement with a decision they have made to one of their colleagues. Their job is to convey a suspicion based on what they see on the field to a technical bowling review. They are no longer the final authority. They have become conduits for suspicion. Suspected LBWs, suspected actions, suspected catches, suspected run outs. Underneath all this lie suspected, undermined umpires.
The case of bowling actions is especially interesting. Throwing is a technical problem. There is no evidence to suggest that throwing gives a bowler an advantage. Throwing a ball and bowling it are simply two categorically different ways of delivering it, much like a catapult and a canon are two different ways of launching missiles. Being a sport which by definition involves arbitrary rules, cricket disallows one and permits the other. It also disallows overstepping. It disallows more than 2 fielders behind square on the leg side. All of these things are technical violations, much like throwing.
The game has itself and Arjuna Ranatunga to blame for the mess it finds itself in with respect to throwing. He dared the game to sanction him when Mutthiah Muralitharan was called (a reasonable umpiring decision in my view), and the sport blinked and gave in. If more bowlers get reported and banned, it may have some effect. It would be so much the better if umpires would simply call bowlers on the field, and the commentariat would get with the program and see it just as they would see a no-ball call for overstepping. The suspension pending technical review can follow. But imagine how much of a deterrent it would be if teams knew that any bowler with a suspect action would be called on the field.
Do teams select bowlers who have problems with front foot no-balls? Do teams select bowlers who have problems with running on the pitch? Law 24.2 recommends more or less the same course of action in the case of throwing as Law 42 does in the case of running on the pitch. Why is this not followed? Why, instead of letting an umpire say "I think that was thrown", does Cricket merely allow an umpire to report a bowler after a match, often with the result that the umpire has to stand in the very next match and watch the same bowler bowl with impunity? Umpires Gould and Oxenford reported Ajmal after Galle, and had to watch him bowl 79 overs in the next match at SSC using an action which, as we now know, was ridiculously illegal. Ajmal was flexing his elbow more the double the permitted extent. It was the equivalent of Ajmal bowling with his front foot 3 inches beyond the bowling crease for an entire Test match and the umpires being able to do nothing about it.
It is a good thing that the ICC's Cricket Committee has encourage umpires to report bowlers for throwing. Perhaps they ought to take the next logical step and encourage umpires to expect the complete backing of the ICC when it comes to running the game. Geoff Allardice's committee ought to tell umpires that they are no longer mere transmitters of suspicion, but are the experts - the masters of the situation and that the ICC's backing will be total. The technical review ought to exist to inform umpires. Take the Muralitharan episode. Ideally, Murali would have been called. His action would have been tested. The point about hyper-extension and the biomechanical point about the inevitability of some amount of flexion would have been made. Armed with all this information, do you think a professional Test Umpire on the ICC's Elite Panel would continue to call Muralitharan for throwing?
It is a fact, even in the age of a technical review, that an illegal action is one which looks illegal to the naked eye. That is the starting point. This is an event which occurs on the field. It has to be indicated there. Secret suspicion undermines both the umpire and the player.