Murali the Dacoit

Bishen Singh Bedi, not know for his discretion, did the cricket world a favor by mouthing what many cricket gurus believe, but shy away from stating. His statements :

1. Murali is a Thief, a Burglar, a Dacoit !!
( haha ,,, this one had me in splits. )

2. I have a picture of Murali somewhere. He resembles a javelin thrower.

3. His action belongs in a darts tournament.

4. I have never seen Murali chuck while he is bowling. But then again, I have never seen him "Bowling".
(good one Bedi sahab. This one would've done Sidhhu proud )

5. Its too bad his arm is bent. There are people in this world who are blind. We don't let them fly airplanes, so why let Murali bowl ?

6. Murali is the best shot-putter in the history of cricket.

Michael Holding endorsed these opinions by saying " I agree 110% with Bedi" . Of course, its easier to endorse than to be the proverbial "one to bell the cat", but this action of his should bring out more frank opinions that were hidden behind the cloak of political correctness till now.

The responses coming from the Sri Lankans are so predictable. They are devoid of any thought and reflect only one emotion - "Murali is the only good thing to happen to our nation (LTTE doesn't count man ). Doesn't matter if he cheats, without him our country has nothing to boast of so let's ignore the merits of the allegations. Lets not introspect and see if there is a problem, lets just blindly back him ". This was made clear by the news sometime back.

"Sri Lanka Cricket president Mohan de Silva said he had asked the ICC to increase the tolerance limit to possibly 15 degrees for all bowlers. The tolerance limits set by the ICC are five degrees for spinners, 7.5 for medium-pacers and 10 for pacemen."

The nuts wanted the ICC to increase the tolerance limit by a factor of 3 to accommodate their national treasure ? How stupid is that ? Tomorrow they will ask for permission to let Chaminda Vaas bowl from 10 yards, or Sangakarra keep wickets on a freakin horse !

Ok, lets set aside the angry rhetoric for a while. Lets analyze the matter at hand

They claim he has a bent arm, a birth defect. I ask, how in the world does his arm straighten fully when throwing in a flat one to the keeper from the deep outfield ? Yes, his crooked, sympathy evoking arm straightens !!! If that is the case, why doesnt he keep it straight when he balls ? Answer : because sometime during his childhood in Kandy, he learnt how to ball like this, and figured it fell in a grey area as per cricket laws, and decided to ride his luck. Look how far its taken him. So, in short, we know he CAN straighten his arm, its not like he has it bent when walking around on the field. Nevertheless, he has some freakish defect which allows him to ball with his arm bent and wrist cocked like a catapult. Is that reason enough for him to be above the law ?

Fine, his action has been cleared under electronic supervision by experts. It is one thing to ball with sensors on your arm in front of inspectors, and come out clean, and quite another to do it in the absense of such motivation, in the heat of a game, repeatedly, ball after ball. Mind you, the "repeatedly, ball after ball" criteria, is paramount. His action, although "legal" at most times, is very susceptible to being "illegal" around 10% of the time. And I think that is unacceptable. In my opinion, it is very likely that he straightens his arm more than the limit around once every over. How is the naked eye to know ? After all, he was cleared by a committee !! The solution is to put his arm in a L-Shaped removable cast. He wears it when he balls, so that he cant straighten his arm, consciously or otherwise.

If a ball is delivered with the arm bent to begin with it is very difficult for umpires to pick out a 'chuck'. With the success of Murali chances are that many other bent arm bowlers will come along. Will every one of them be put through lab tests or not? Will umpires be able to judge when they chuck? I imagine not, and hence by setting the wrong precedent with Murali we are opening the gates to chuckers paradise. Hence the rules should be amended to enforce an action where the arm must be kept straight to the naked eye during delivery. Apparently most bowlers straighten by a few degrees but if it is not visible to the naked eye, it should be good enough. If a lot of straightening occurs at the point of delivery, the umpire is in a good position to spot it and call it. That cannot happen if the arm is bent to begin with.

All in all, never mind the sympathy factor that poor Murali evokes. Too bad that he studied in a school run by Benedictine monks, or that his arm is bent or that he is Sri Lankan and he never got laid till his 500th wicket ! His bowling action is bullshit, and all this bargaining with arm bending angle limits, is a dangerous game that could lead to cricket mutating into something else.

The ICC has relented and increased permissible arm straightening to 15%. They say it is the threshold at which chucking is visible. Who is to say that in a few years, another defective arm will not come out of Sri Lanka and ask for it to be made 20% ? From the news reports, there already is a misguided kid in Lanka who imitates Murali and is pretty good at it. Maybe eventually they will have a freak who bowls out of his arse and bags 5000 wickets before someone asks the question " Is that legal ? "

I hope someone with guts takes over the ICC and returns sanity to the Sri Lankan madness. No more concessions to Murali and umpires should be able to call him at their discretion. More importantly, all the wickets he took with the "doosra" to date, should be obliterated from the record books. In fact, all his 530 wickets should be studied closely and the dubious ones removed from the record books. THAT will put his figures in perspective, and give Shane Warne his rightful crown.

On a lighter note, what are the odds that this page shows up high on the Google search results when "Murali" is the search criteria ? That way, Murali could stumble upon this while trying to google himself, haha. ( wishful thinking on my part, but then if Murali has managed to fool the world for so long, anything can happen. )