Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Murali Another Factor
Yesterday I forgot to add an item while talking about the failings of the disgraced Indian cricket team. Batting problems, bowling inadequacies, poor fielding, lack of grit etc were there.. At least against Bangladesh, the pitch-again a failure on the part of the captain- was a tad unfriendly. But the crucial factor which worked against India in the match against Sri Lanka was Murali. I know I am treading into dangerous territory. But the picture I feel will be incomplete if I don’t mention Murali and his influence on his opponents.
Murali is an unfortunate person who has an elbow deformity. Which I am sure prevents him from doing several things which we take for granted. But that bent elbow enables him to bowl in such a way that he unlike normal humans can deliver his off breaks and doosras without any change in action.
Several players and umpires feel that he has an illegal action. And at least one umpire, who later got the tag of being an anti-Asian, in fact went ahead and called him. And that let loose all the hell. Sri Lanka converted this simple issue of a bent arm into a racial slur and ICC, even otherwise a spine-less creature, cringed dutifully and yielded to this blackmail. Based on the original premise that every person chucks, the law makers had made a provision of a five degree allowance for spinners and ten degrees for the quicker bowlers. Which only means one can bend his arm by this much before he straightens it. When the Murali issue snowballed into a first class crisis, threatening to divide the cricket world into whites and not so whites, ICC in a holy gesture raised the bar enabling everybody-spin and pace alike- to bend his or her arm by 15 degrees. And thus Murali’s action became a legitimate one.
But I don’t think any batsmen and off spinner would ever feel comfortable with Murali’s action. Even as he weaves a web of death around the batsmen with his even otherwise excellent control and guile, the dismissed batsman might be permitted to think he had been upstaged by non-cricketing forces.
This is not an excuse for the final nail he hit on the Indian coffin. But his bowling also was an important factor for India’s collapse. And anybody who has only a four-inch wide bat to defend his citadel might feel stumped even before he has faced a ball!
Murali is an unfortunate person who has an elbow deformity. Which I am sure prevents him from doing several things which we take for granted. But that bent elbow enables him to bowl in such a way that he unlike normal humans can deliver his off breaks and doosras without any change in action.
Several players and umpires feel that he has an illegal action. And at least one umpire, who later got the tag of being an anti-Asian, in fact went ahead and called him. And that let loose all the hell. Sri Lanka converted this simple issue of a bent arm into a racial slur and ICC, even otherwise a spine-less creature, cringed dutifully and yielded to this blackmail. Based on the original premise that every person chucks, the law makers had made a provision of a five degree allowance for spinners and ten degrees for the quicker bowlers. Which only means one can bend his arm by this much before he straightens it. When the Murali issue snowballed into a first class crisis, threatening to divide the cricket world into whites and not so whites, ICC in a holy gesture raised the bar enabling everybody-spin and pace alike- to bend his or her arm by 15 degrees. And thus Murali’s action became a legitimate one.
But I don’t think any batsmen and off spinner would ever feel comfortable with Murali’s action. Even as he weaves a web of death around the batsmen with his even otherwise excellent control and guile, the dismissed batsman might be permitted to think he had been upstaged by non-cricketing forces.
This is not an excuse for the final nail he hit on the Indian coffin. But his bowling also was an important factor for India’s collapse. And anybody who has only a four-inch wide bat to defend his citadel might feel stumped even before he has faced a ball!
# posted by Upendra Varma @ 1:12 PM 
