Saqlain seeks flexibility in elbow extension rule
ICC LAW HINDERING ART OF OFF-SPIN BOWLING, SAYS PAKISTAN GREAT
FORMER Pakistan spinner Saqlain Mushtaq wants the International Cricket Council (ICC) to review its existing 15-degree arm/ elbow extension law for bowlers.
Saqlain, who is head coach at the Pakistan Cricket Board’s High Performance Centre in Lahore, said the law was discouraging youngsters from becoming off-spin bowlers.
“I would like to know how the ICC experts reached this conclusion of allowing only 15-degrees latitude to bowlers. Did they do research on Asian players, Caribbean players, others because everyone is different.
“Asian players’ bodies are different, they tend to have more flexibility in their arms and some have hyper mobile joints. If you look at Caribbean or English players, their bodies are different,” Saqlain said.
He noted that even the carry angle, meaning flexibility in the arm while standing, was different in Asian players.
“I think the ICC should review this law because the 15-degrees latitude is too little. It is discouraging players from the art of off-spin bowling,” he said. “I believe that one can bowl off-breaks, doosra and top spin even within the law, but since it came out, I have seen players who used to bowl off-spin now becoming leg-spinners or wrist spinners.”
Saqlain, 44, ended an illustrious career with 208 Test and 288 ODI wickets, and made the Doosra ball famous. He said he believed that a off-spinner could also be successful in white-ball formats if they had a good set of skills and it was not necessary to be able to bowl the doosra to be effective.
He also felt that teams were not relying on specialist off-break bowlers in white-ball formats because of an increasing trend of using wrist spinners.
“It is an ongoing trend in white-ball formats that teams want to have maximum wrist spinners like India has [Yuzvendra] Chahal and [Kuldeep] Yadav, Australia has Adam Zampa and Stephenson, England has Adil Rashid… And this is discouraging players from taking up the art of off-spin bowling.”
He noted that it was only mainly in Test cricket that some countries still employed specialist off-spinners successfully, such as Nathan Lyon was a regular for Australia and R Ashwin for India, while Moeen Ali has done his bit for England.
Saqlain, who has worked as spin consultant and coach with teams including England, West Indies, and New Zealand, urged countries to allocate budgets so regular permanent spin coaches could be part of their teams.
“There is also a need to have permanent spin coaches at domestic level and the junior levels,” he said.
He said he had no doubt that spinners would have a vital role to play in the upcoming World T20 Cup in the UAE and Oman, provided the conditions remained dry.
“The role of spinners in the subcontinent and the UAE is always vital but there is no dew factor because a lot of matches are held under lights.
“If there is no dew, they will dominate in dry conditions, but to do this, they must be class bowlers with a very good set of skills. It is all about bowlers who try to get away with just bowling economically and those who try to take wickets as well.”