Maybe time to chuck it

You might not have heard of Shane Shillingford before the West Indian cricket team arrived on our shores earlier this summer.

In case you still haven’t, Shillingford is the Windies’ off-spin bowler whose action has put him in hot water with the International Cricket Council.

Shillingford sat out the third test against New Zealand after failing to convince an independent panel in Australia that his bowling arm was within the permitted 15 degrees (from the point the armraises above the shoulder to the point of delivery), and he is banned until he can do so.

The ICC has a university of arms and legs based in Perth which takes a look at suspect bowlers’ actions to ensure they are not gaining an advantage by bending their arm before releasing the ball. Shillingford travelled with Windies coach Ottis Gibson to Perth, before coming to New Zealand, after questions were asked at the end of a series against India.

There was particular concern about the flex in Shillingford’s arm when he bowled the doosra, a delivery which goes in the opposite direction to the normal off-spinner.

While spot-fixing has been grabbing most of cricket’s headlines away from the pitch lately, the issue of what constitutes a legal delivery remains a thorny one.

Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan was named Wisden’s greatest test cricketer in 2002. He claimed his 800th test scalp with his final ball in test cricket in 2010, but throughout his career he was dogged by concerns over the birth defect which allowed him to hyperextend his arm.

Coincidentally, the 15 degrees allowed by the ICC is one degree more than Muralitharan was judged to have had in his delivery arm.

Chucking is pretty much the lowest term that can be thrown at a cricketer, and one can only wonder what’s going through Shillingford’s mind.

It’s certainly been a blow for the West Indian team.

If the ruling is so difficult to adjudicate on that it requires men in white lab coats with super-slowmo cameras to decide, maybe we’d be better off just deleting that section from the rule book.

The chucking debate has been driven as much by sporting politics as it has by fairness. Maybe it’s time to chuck it for good.