Sales of protractors are bound to shoot through the roof over the next few years when umpires at all levels of the game queue up to purchase them. Since bowlers are allowed 15 degrees of freedom and umpires are expected to make an initial judgement on whether the ball was chucked or not, it is safe to assume that this presents a great opportunity for stationery manufacturers.

The ICC, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen to bend the rules to allow those who bend their elbows. If it has found out that almost all bowlers bend their elbows during delivery, the right option would have been to enforce and ensure that no bowler did that. Instead, the decision makers at the organization whose logo was changed six months ago, chose to allow more and more chuckers to come in and spoil the game.

It is ridiculous that someone like Michael Holding has been party to this decision. In fact, one of the panelists, Angus Fraser seems to believe that he truly did chuck, as did Ambrose, Hadlee, Lillee, Trueman, Kapil etc. Yes, and England will win 15 tests in a row against Australia starting from next year's Ashes series. Harbhajan Singh's 14 five wicket hauls correlate nicely with 12 degrees of bending compared to Ashley Giles' 5 degrees and 5 five wicket hauls in tests. Ramnaresh Sarwan's legspin has almost zero degrees of bending. So is there a correlation between quality of the bowler and chucking? Perhaps.

Really, cant there be a better solution to a problem which has really exploded in the ICC's faces over the last decade? The problem now is that this legitimizes chucking. Someone like say Andrew Flintoff will be able to get away with the way he bowls. As will James Kirtley. As will Shoaib Akhtar. As will ... so many others.

Labels: chucking