The Taskin and Sunny affair

What is it with the International Cricket Council (ICC) and South Asian bowlers? Whenever a South Asian bowler becomes threatening, there is an ICC umpire waiting somewhere to report him. And why is it that in all this, Indian bowlers seldom fall into the net? The news that Bangladeshi bowlers Taskin Ahmed and Ilyas Sunny were reported during the ICC qualifying rounds and then suspended from playing international cricket following the tests in an Indian testing centre in Madras.
Taskin was a leading fast bowler in the Asian Cup played in Dhaka where Bangladesh were runners-up having defeated Pakistan and Sri Lanka on the way. In the ICC 20/20 qualifying rounds in India that Bangladesh played in great style, Taskin was again a leading bowler. And in the only match in the Super 10 stage of the ICC World Cup, before the ban became effective, Taskin again proved his high qualities as a fast bowler when he took 2 wickets against Pakistan.
In Bangladesh, cricket is now a national passion where millions follow every aspect of their team's performance. They have watched their team emerge from minnows to a position where, in the shorter versions of the game, the Indians, the Australians or the English can no longer walk into a game against Bangladesh and think the game will be a push over. In recent times, we have seen the so-called "great" teams turned into minnows by Bangladeshi bowlers. In Dhaka last year, the Indian cricketers were turned into minnows as Mustafizur Rahman instilled fear into their hearts with his unplayable off cutters as Bangladesh beat the Indians 2-1 in a bilateral series.
The Taskin affair has shell-shocked cricket lovers in Bangladesh. Most of them, however, have very little clue as to why and when a bowler's action becomes suspect. Those who know the game a little better know that there is a law, which says that, a bowler at the time of delivering the ball cannot flex his bowling arm more than 15 degrees when it leaves his shoulder. If the bowler is allowed to flex more than 15 degrees, he can bring pace to his delivery or he can also make the ball turn more to his advantage and against the batsman.
The 15-degree limit is, of course, a scientific and medical argument and cannot be challenged logically. The problem, however, is: when does an umpire apply this sacrosanct rule upon bowlers? The first problem that crops up is that, the umpire in the field does not have any crystal ball in his hand to tell him that the bowler has crossed the 15-degree limit as easily as he can in a testing laboratory. Then the next important problem is in applying this 15-degree rule. A bowler may bowl one ball that could break the 15-degree law and the next ball can be one within the 15-degree limit. That brings into the argument a pertinent question: when does the umpire apply the law to penalise a bowler on the 15-degree law and send him for the test?
Then, there is the bigger issue, which is what the public that watches the game in the field in thousands and on TV in millions think about the 15-degree law. The guardian of cricket laws, the ICC, has thus far kept these cricket lovers without whom the game would be an exercise in futility, in darkness about what this 15-degree law is. The ICC thus far has made no attempts to explain this confusing law to them in any manner whatsoever.
At first, it was chucking and those involved were the fast bowlers. Then came the bowling genius Muttiah Murlitharan and then it was the issue of flexion. His success was unbelievable and as he continued to mesmerise opponents everywhere, there were loud cries that he was flexing his elbow too much. He was subjected to many tests and came through each undaunted. In his case, it was also found that far from violating any cricket law on bowling, his "freakishly supple shoulders" generated "tremendous ball speed". He was wrongly subjected to harassment.
The harassment of Muttiah Murlitharan led the ICC to adopt the 15-degree limit. Recollection of his story will put the Taskin/Sunny affair in a better perspective that it is anything but cricket and its laws that have put their bright careers in jeopardy. The great bowler did not get any rational response from the ICC or cricket experts when he had angrily said after his 'doosra' had been called illegal that all fast bowlers violated the flexion law as much as he was accused of if they had been subjected to the tests he had faced. At that time, Muttiah had said: "They're (bowlers) not robots, your arm can only move a certain way. I can challenge anyone. Put every bowler to the test, and see what you get… I've been bowling like this for over ten years, and it's not appropriate to pick out only me. If you check, you'll find that 80 per cent of bowlers have some degree of flexion. They should also be tested to see if their actions are correct."
Thus, if other bowlers are randomly tested as Taskin and Sunny, they will face the same predicament. The issue of who faces the test is also a grey area. Umpires appear to be calling suspect bowlers who belong to certain teams who threaten certain other teams. Ian Chappel, once a great player but as a commentator, often biased for certain countries against certain others, said of Taskin and Sunny that it was unfair that they were sent for tests when a World ICC competition was on. Interestingly, they were performing threateningly for certain countries in the competition including India.
While the ICC could be congratulated for its uncompromising stand on match fixing based on legality, morality, and ethics, it is high time that it looks at itself. There is a nagging suspicion that the guardian of cricket is now captive of a few countries and uses its powers and the cricket laws to uphold their interests. These are the countries that not too long ago had tried to divide international cricket into the group of blue blood and the commoners only to be humiliated by Bangladesh that beat two of these "blue blood" teams convincingly in international competitions and had kicked out one from the preliminary stage of the 50/50 World Cup in 2014.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) has been a major negative influence upon world cricket by the money it has been able to spin. Not too long ago, the game paid almost nothing to those who played it professionally and was always a liability for its organisers. These days, professional cricketers are some of the richest sportsmen and cricket organisers, loaded with money. And it is the IPL and commercialism in India with cricket that has brought this turnabout in cricket and cricketers.  While one must pat India on the back for bringing money to cricket, it is time for it to draw the line and leave the ICC to be the guardian of world cricket and not the custodian of Indian cricket and commercialism that goes with it.
Bangladesh knows too well the nexus between the ICC and Indian cricket where the umpires are not above suspicion based on past experience. On the Facebook, there is a tsunami of anger raging that Bangladesh has again become the victim of ICC conspiracy. The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has been cheered for its loud complaint to the ICC.
Nevertheless, while hoping good sense would prevail in the ICC, the Bangladesh cricket lovers should demand that the public should be made aware of what this mysterious 15-degree flexion law is and whether it is being applied fairly and not selectively to help certain cricketing nations maintain their stranglehold on international cricket.
The writer is a retired Ambassador.
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