Spin king entrapped in wicked web

God, how my heart went out to Muttiah Muralitharan last Sunday. Not least because I too have been accused of chucking in my time and, many, many years later it still rankles. A lot.

Granted, Muralitharan has been humiliated by suspicious umpires in front of thousands of spectators and millions of TV viewers - my cricketing ethics were called in to question in a back garden with no one but a worm-chomping crow looking on as I went to war with a precocious, smarty-pants, far-too-cocky-for-his-own-good 12year-old batsman who thought he was Viv Richards (he now works in the legal profession, say no more). Still, I've been there, Muttiah, and I know what you're going through.

Muralitharan is a Sri Lankan spin bowler whose curious bowling action has been the source of much controversy over the past couple of years, in which time he has taken over 200 Test wickets.

Three years ago, when he played for Sri Lanka in Australia, three local umpires publicly labelled him a `chucker', accusing him of throwing the ball, rather than bowling it.

The International Cricket Council promptly investigated his bowling action and cleared him of suspicion. Soon after, the University of Western Australia carried out an independent inquiry, studying his bowling from six different angles at 1,000 frames per second and concluded that his arm was permanently bent and his right wrist double-jointed, thus making an entirely legal action seem unorthodox. So that should have been that. But then Muralitharan made a terrible mistake: he took 16 wickets against England in a Test match at the Oval last September, helping Sri Lanka to their first ever victory on English soil. England coach David Lloyd wasn't a happy camper and duly queried the legality of Muralitharan's bowling again - a course of action he, presumably, would not have taken if his lads had left the off-spinner with figures of 0-132. Once again, Muralitharan was effectively being labelled a cheat, admittedly by opponents whose off-stumps he had a habit of removing. Not surprisingly the Sri Lankan cricket board was growing a little tired of the whole business and accused Lloyd of sour grapes. Amongst others Ian Botham and Michael Holding, both of whom know a thing or two about bowling themselves, sided with the Sri Lankans and defended Muralitharan, describing him as an extraordinary cricket talent. Those who know him describe Muralitharan as a gentle, quiet man who is shattered by accusations that he is a cheat. He is currently on tour in Australia where he has been roundly booed and heckled by crowds wherever he has played.

Last Sunday, Australian umpire Ross Emerson, who three years ago was one of the umpires to dismiss him as a `chucker', noballed him for throwing in a oneday match against England in Adelaide, re-igniting the whole controversy. On Thursday Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga was given a suspended six-match ban for his response to Emerson's decision, when he led his team off the pitch in protest.

`Shameful' was the predictable response of the cricketing establishment to Ranatunga's most un-cricket like behaviour, when in fact his only mistake was probably agreeing to return to the field to finish the game. Ranatunga simply makes the point that Muralitharan's action is the most analysed and scrutinised of any bowler's in world cricket and nobody, including the ICC, has been able to prove, with freely available video evidence, that he is doing anything wrong. His supporters are suspicious of the behaviour of those umpires who have no-balled the spinner, hinting that they are so peeved that the ICC failed to support their `chucking' allegations that they are now taking the law in to their own hands. One such umpire, Australian Darrell Hair, no-balled Muralitharan in a match three years ago and when he switched to bowl leg-breaks in an entirely orthodox manner, Hair no-balled him again. On that occasion Mr Hair would appear to have made up his own rules.

And last Sunday Emerson chose to humiliate the Sri Lankan once again in public, and give further ammunition to the hecklers in the crowd, when he could have asked the ICC to re-examine video evidence of his bowling during the match.

The Australians are amongst Muralitharan's fiercest critics, the same Australians who appointed Shane Warne captain and Mark Waugh his vice-captain for the one-day series, just after it was revealed that both players admitted taking money from an Indian bookmaker for information on pitch and weather conditions during a one-day tournament in Sri Lanka in 1994.

No connection, of course, to the Muralitharan controversy, but sometimes you have to wonder about the cricketing definition of `shameful' behaviour.

Luckily video evidence wasn't available to that 12-year-old in my back garden all those years ago because he could have proved conclusively that I chucked my googly at him with as much ferocity as I could muster. He asked for it, though. I had just spent 45 minutes in the parish priest's cabbage patch trying to retrieve my previous delivery. His nose healed up, I'm glad to say, and he resumed his batting career elsewhere. I chucked it in, in a manner of speaking.