The 15-degree question

The current row over chucking and the problem of defining and policing illegal actions, is a dispute between science and subjectivity. In the human corner we have umpires whose job it has been to call bowlers who throw. In HAL's corner we have technologists (all, mysteriously, natives of a single university in Australia) with their all-seeing machines and software.

When cricket was plagued with an epidemic of dodgy actions a few years ago, the ICC effectively sub-contracted the task of confirming if a bowler threw to the machine men. Umpires lost their magisterial function: they were reduced to snitching on the suspect player and waiting for the honorary prefects in the said Australian university to test the action via laboratory simulations and sophisticated cameras, and pronounce on its legality.

The reason for this innovation was that television cameras had begun providing ever clearer views of bowlers in their delivery arc which highlighted kinks that might otherwise have blushed unseen. The need for a definitive view endorsed by the hardware and authority of science became more urgent because of the way in which Muralitharan's action was called into question by Australian umpires. Murali had a substantial international career behind him when he was first called, and while he had one of the oddest actions seen on a spinner in the game's history, it was embarrassing for the ICC to have a famous bowler called for the first time so far into his career. The umpires who called him, variously abrasive and excitable (one of them even called Murali's legbreaks), helped light the fire which became a conflagration in the hands of the toughest, canniest captain of modern times, Arjuna Ranatunga, who stared down offending officials in defence of his star bowler. Murali was tested by the boffins, cleared and then indicted again for his doosra, setting the stage for ICC's present flounderings.

When the scientists first announced that Murali's action only seemed illegal because of the illusion created by a congenitally bent elbow, cricketers and officials were sceptical because they trusted the evidence of their eyes. The subsequent outlawing of Murali's doosra seemed to vindicate the doubters. And when it was announced that he straightened his arm over 14 degrees while bowling the doosra, cricket's wiseacres sniffed harder.

Bishan Bedi and Michael Atherton publicly, and many players and umpires off the record, continued to believe that he chucked. Even a film made of Murali bowling in a rigid brace didn't convince the doubters. The inaugural ICC award for Bowler of the Year was given to Shane Warne over Murali because it was rumoured that several jurors refused to reward a bowler they believed threw most balls he bowled. Certainly cricket fans had to suffer Richie Benaud and Michael Holding being evasive in print and on television about the reasons for their choice.

The ICC's decision to appeal to the authority of science was good policy made bad by ad hoc implementation. When close scientific scrutiny showed that most bowlers straightened their arms, the ICC parked its brains and pressed the accelerator. It invented discriminatory guidelines for umpires: fast bowlers were to be allowed the most leeway in straightening their arms, with declining allowances for medium-pacers and spinners.

There were three problems with this, each formidable enough to make angels back off. One, the unequal allowances were unfair to slow bowlers. Two, they were impossible to implement. Three, the scientists on whose researches these guidelines were allegedly based, disagreed with them. For example, the unequal chucking allowances were justified by the involuntary straightening caused by the stress of bowling at higher speeds. One of the scientists objected, saying that Murali's arm speed equalled that of many fast bowlers. He also went on to recommend a common standard: all bowlers should be allowed to straighten their arms over 15 degrees.

Suddenly that's where we are now. The scientists have spoken to an ICC committee that has accepted their recommendations, and abruptly the same players, commentators and journalists who pilloried Murali as a blot on the game, its history and its statistics, are lining up to endorse this more liberal license to bend and straighten the bowling arm.

What revelation wrought this miracle? What new scientific insight goosed the ICC into preparing to abandon its recent chucking guidelines? The clincher, it turns out, was the news that a survey of the bowlers in the ICC Champions Trophy revealed that 99 per cent of all bowlers chucked. This isn't so different from earlier declarations that 90 per cent of all bowlers chuck, so the turnabout must have to do with the names named rather than the general conclusion. It turns out that under the current definition of a legitimate delivery, such pillars of the bowling establishment as Glenn McGrath, Shaun Pollock, and Jason Gillespie chuck. They straighten their arms in excess of the current 10-degree allowance for fast bowlers.

Abruptly the world's cricketing establishments (and sanctimonious ex-cricketers and pundits) were brought face to face with the alarming reality that the records of their heroes were as thoroughly derived from their dartboard skills as Muralitharan's. More so, if anything, because it was only Murali's doosra that was outlawed: his customary deliveries were deemed to come in under the five-degree limit for spinners. In contrast, Australia's fast bowling firm, Messrs McGrath, Gillespie & Lee soared above the 10-degree limit with routine deliveries.

When Murali pointed this out later, the spokesperson for Cricket Australia, deaf to irony, huffed on about the complex science behind the findings and the unfairness of accusing great bowlers of chucking! There's never been a more emphatic vindication of a player in the history of cricket and after years of being singled out and persecuted, Murali is entitled to say so. He and Ranatunga stand out as resolute, principled men; most of their critics look like ambushed opportunists, ready to turn on a dime. For example, after his recent swipe at Murali, you would expect the Australian Prime Minister, John 'Loose Lips' Howard, to either denounce McGrath and Gillespie as chuckers or apologise to Murali for being an ignorant pol on a hair trigger. I haven't heard a peep out of him.

This silence, this lack of public self-criticism should make us wary of embracing the ICC's new enthusiasm for a 15-degree limit for everyone. After the fiasco of the previous guidelines, the last thing cricket needs is another drunken lurch at reform. Where's the hurry now that the ICC believes that everyone chucks? We should talk this one out.

Just to illustrate the need for discussion: why 15 degrees? Geoffrey Boycott thinks the limit's been raised and extended to slow bowlers to include Murali. This is so wrong it's perverse. Murali doesn't need 15 degrees: after remedial work, his arm only straightened in the region of 10 degrees while bowling the doosra. A cynical Sri Lankan could more plausibly argue that the ICC stretched the rules to fit the fast men in and then tossed a bone to the others by giving them equal latitude.

So, to return to the question, why 15? The ICC's answer seems to be that up to 15 degrees, a straightening arm is invisible to the naked eye. The ICC is trying to reassure us; given its recent record, this should make us very afraid. The new rule, the ICC is saying, changes nothing practically: the spectator won't even notice the difference. The new rule will be aimed at the egregiously illegal bowling action, visible to the umpire's eye. Inquiries will only be initiated into actions that seem illegal to the umpires in the middle.

For those of us who want the law on chucking to err on the side of strictness, there are two problems with the ICC's explanation. It's not clear that arm-straightening up to 15 degrees is invisible. If we are to believe that Brett Lee, Shoaib Akhtar, Harbhajan Singh and McGrath straighten their arm less than 15 degrees, then it's clear to most of us that sub-15 degree straightening is visible. At the risk of sounding insufferable I should add that I've long believed that McGrath straightens his arm visibly, and wrote as much in an article in this magazine in June this year, some months before the scientists reported to the ICC committee. So if the object of the law is to prevent visible chucking, the limit should be pegged lower. If the object is something else, the ICC should tell us what it is and the cricketing world can debate the issue.

Secondly, the idea that umpires in future will only call bowlers on the basis of what they can see from square-leg or from behind the stumps at the bowler's end in a state of technological ignorance, is daft. Such chasteness isn't possible: the TV camera is the snake in Eden. Once it's there, you can only affect innocence, you can't live it. Every umpire will continue to second-guess his intuitions by studying television footage and slow-motion replays; he'd be stupid not to. Which brings us back to the original question: why 15 degrees?

We don't need to answer that question in a hurry. We can take our time. The ICC needs to collate and publish its findings, complete with names and numbers. If they can measure actions from the televised past, so much the better. Let everyone involved with the game compare one bowler's "bit of flexion" (McGrath's exquisitely mealy-mouthed description of his 12-degree straightening) with another's. Let us argue over methodology, about comparisons, about the omniscience of science and the fallibility of men for the next year if we must. Let us calculate average degrees of straightening for fast bowlers and finger-spinners and medium-pacers and wrist-spinners before we settle on the appropriate level of permitted 'flexion'. Above all, let us not take the opinion of the ICC or its committee as holy writ. Cricket needs conservative physicians in this uncertain hour: these men are barber surgeons.

Mukul Kesavan is an essayist and novelist based in Delhi.
This article first appeared in the December 2004 issue of Wisden Asia Cricket.
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