The Hindu : Sport : Consistency needed in interpretation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 03, 2005

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Consistency needed in interpretation

Flintoff's action appears to deteriorate when he searches for an extra yard of pace

PETER ROEBUCK

Andrew Flintoff's jerky bowling action was the main point of interest in an otherwise forgettable mismatch between England and Bangladesh recently staged at Lord's cricket ground. The Lancastrian's last spell contained some of the most blatant transgressions of the law covering legitimate actions seen in respectable company this year.

The bumper delivered from round the wicket that seemed to have put the visitors out of their misery looked diabolical. Surprisingly, the issue was allowed to go through to the keeper, a response bound to have been noticed in the cricketing countries of the Indian Ocean.

Craven nationalists reacted with fury the last time this column drew attention to Flintoff's action. A regrettable tendency has arisen in some quarters to play the man and not the ball. Not that every delivery was condemned, or every spell.

Rather, Flintoff's action appears to deteriorate when he searches for an extra yard of pace and especially when he moves around the wicket and starts to pound the middle of the pitch. Then his naturally open-chested style betrays him. Fluency is replaced by the sort of raggedness that regularly draws censure upon the heads of subcontinental leather-flingers. And there's the rub.

Wide of the mark

Suggestions that your correspondent nurses some particular grievance against Englishmen are as wide of the mark as Devon Malcolm's most speculative delivery. Nor does it survive familiarity with the facts. After subjecting it to an examination calculated to satisfy the most rigorous revenue inspector, this column regretfully questioned the acceptability of Jermaine Lawson's action.

Likewise Brett Lee's work was condemned whenever he went wide of the crease and opened his chest to send down a pinger, a custom now in abeyance. The bumper with which Lee removed Marcus Trescothick in Perth was described as a blight upon the game. Lee's beamers were unfavourably reviewed, including the retaliatory chest-thumper sent down to Abdul Razzaq earlier this year.

Of course, my eyes may deceive and Flintoff's bumpers may be delivered with an arm as ramrod straight as a Gurkha sensing the approach of his commanding officer. That the topic has not been considered worth addressing is altogether more disconcerting. What is the old saying? There are none so blind as those that will not see?

Cricket is ready enough to send Shabbir, Fernando, Harbhajan, Shoaib Malik, Shoaib Akhtar and others for some rehabilitation. No harm in that. Better that a bowler is helped than condemned by word of mouth and eventually humiliated in public.

Despite the complacency of those convinced that the past worked, which it did not, and that these things can be left in the hands of the umpires, which they cannot, cricket is trying to develop a mature approach that helps the player and protects the game's integrity. Consistency is needed, though, or troubles lie ahead.

Lack of rigour

Flintoff's action is not the real issue. Indeed it is a minor matter upon which opinions may vary. England's lack of rigour is the problem. Long regarded as the guardian of the game, the old country contributed little to the investigation of corruption (even in county cricket), bewilderingly thought it fit to play Zimbabwe at home but not away and now seems unduly concerned about players' private lives.

Time to throw away the chocolate cake and to join the rest of the world in the struggle for equality.

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