Firmly placing the issue of chucking in world cricket back on the frontburner, fast bowling great and former West Indies coach Andy Roberts said that two of the game’s fastest bowlers of today, Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar and Australia’s Brett Lee, bowl with a "suspect action".
Roberts also slammed the ICC for stretching the rules and "encouraging chucking in cricket" and accused "scientists and coaches" of trying to kill the "art of fast bowling".
"They don’t have many good quality fast bowlers right now. The only two fast bowlers that I can see and talk of, one is Brett Lee and the other is Shoaib Akhtar, and both, in my mind, are suspect," Roberts told The Indian Express at the store he runs in Cedargrove village, north of St John’s, the capital of Antigua.
"I am not the only one, most of the world thinks so. I have watched them. Brett Lee is a very good athlete. I think he’s one of the best athletes in the Australian team. But one or two of his deliveries are suspect," said the 55-year-old mainstay of Clive Lloyd’s famous pace battery of the ’70s and ’80s.
"Shoaib is a different case. Looking at Shoaib, you wonder. You look at Shoaib from side-on, you look at him from the back, I wonder if hyperextension can be that and all that they say it is," said Roberts, who is now associated with a private initiative to promote Twenty20 cricket in the Caribbean.
Akhtar was twice reported by umpires over throwing allegations but his action was finally cleared by University of Western Australia’s testing centre in 2001, which said that he "hyperextended" his elbow because of an abnormality in the joint. Lee, who has also come under ICC scanner, has said that chucking is an "optical illusion."
Slamming the ICC for increasing the limit to which a bowler can bend his arm while bowling to 15 degrees, Roberts said that umpires should be allowed to do their work freely.
"To be honest, I would say that the ICC is encouraging chucking in cricket. By raising the limit to 15 degrees, you are encouraging people to bend their arms. That’s all I have to say, it should remain what it is, and umpires should be allowed to be free to do their work as they see it."
Roberts rued the fact that "biomechanics" has taken over fast bowling with scientists deciding on the nuances. "I do not want to see the art dying. I believe that coaches and scientists are now trying to kill the art. Scientists are now heavily involved in it because biomechanics has taken over. They now come to tell you that this is what you have to do to bowl fast or survive," said Roberts.
"Nobody has a perfect action, and you could be as perfect as you want, bio-mechanic-wise. But why do you have so many injuries today? It’s because you have too many young people trying to bowl fast. You’ll seldom find a fast bowler over the age of 26 getting a stress fracture. All the stress fractures occur when the bowler is in his early years. Their bodies aren’t matured enough to take the grind and demands of fast bowling," he said.
Blaming "too much coaching" for the decline of fast bowling, Roberts said, "Fast bowlers are born, they are not made. They are born to bowl fast. It’s not that everybody can pick up a ball and run in and bowl fast. There has to be something there. But if you look at the coaching methods of today, we want everybody to do the same thing. We want everybody to bowl line and length. And that’s taking away from the pace of the ball. If I had to work with anyone, I’d say, ‘Bowl fast, practice to bowl fast, practice to control’. You have to do everything together."
On the India series, Roberts has not got "too carried away" by the victory. "That is just a beginning. You have to show me that you can do it over a period of time. It is encouraging to win but I would like to see us being a little more dominant when we win," he said.
- AJAY S SHANKAR