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| Wednesday, 31 December 2003 |
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Murali Bashing The media in England and Australia have once again started off on a campaign to vilify Muralitharan. The reason is that he has now developed a lethal leg-spinner not distinguishable from his off-spinner that is going to cause mayhem among batsmen. We saw it for the first time in the series against the English Team but he must have bowled it in his short stint of county cricket this summer in England. Sensing the potential danger to his team, Gough called it the 'doosra' and said that it was thrown. Murali not anyone else had so named it, but Gough's intent was to create a sinister aura about a new delivery. Hussain and Atherton fellow county players with Murali quickly took over the campaign against him. Atherton's outburst is particularly disgusting as he and Murali were county colleagues at Lancashire, when a few years ago Murali took 66 wickets in six matches. Atherton standing in the slips took many catches off Murali cheering him all the way saying "well bowled". Why did he not say "well thrown" because now he says Murali throws every ball? It's a case of the weasel squealing. Atherton tries to debunk the scientific tests carried out in Western Australia and Hong Kong and accepted by the ICC, that Murali has a bent elbow which he cannot straighten and hence does not throw. Let us not forget that Atherton as England's captain admitted to having dirt (sandy earth) in his pocket, the ideal stuff to scuff up a ball. The tolerance level for straightening the elbow has been set at five degrees and if Murali is now to be tested for this, so must every bowler. The results would show that many bowlers exceed this limit. There are other reports in the Australian media now taking up the cry against Murali in view of the impending visit of their team to Sri Lanka in february 2004. We can expect this Murali bashing to intensify in the next few weeks before and during the Aussie visit and reach a frenzy when Sri Lanka tour Australia later in the year. Murali's rivalry with Warne and their race to beat Walsh's record will be one of the highlights of 2004. The deformity of Murali not being able to straighten his elbow has been compensated for by his wrist being extraordinarily flexible enabling him to rotate it much more than normal. His prodigious spinning ability is derived from this rotation of wrist which he also snaps to get that extra bite. All this extra wrist action on the ball which is actually like throwing with the writs, is perfectly legal. Paul Adams of South Africa does this in a different way. Every bowler whether striving for spin or swing does this to some degree. It is to Murali's credit that he has worked so hard to develop this new delivery that spins away from the right hander. He is now twice the bowler that he was, causing confusion and indecision in the batsman's mind as to which way the ball would spin. Previously, there was Ramadhin who on the first post war West Indies tour to England in 1950 bowled off-breaks and a 'mystery' leg break to create havoc among the Englishmen. Jack Iverson of Australia too bowled both spinners, reportedly with one finger bent beneath the ball to impart spin either way. Both had short careers but Murali will stay long to torment the best. In recent years left handers Thorpe, Lara and Fleming had great success against Murali and an opinion was created that he did not have much success against the southpaws. But this has all changed and he got Thorpe five times out of six in the last series. Indeed all the batsmen were just bent on trying to read him and were stroke-less. First they opted to play him on the front foot using a lot of pad, then they changed to back-foot play with even less success. His conceding of just 40 runs off 40 overs in the first innings of the Third Test show how deadly he was and how he mesmerized the batsmen into impotence. As our former coach Dave Whatmore said, let the world celebrate and marvel at this spinning sensation Muttaih Muralitharan. D.L. Seneviratne, |
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