An interesting article trying to shed some additional light on the so called “chucking” controversy.
Flexing the joints: hypermobility in cricket](http://uk.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/ARCHIVE/CRICKET_NEWS/2003/MAY/187467_CI_27MAY2003.html)
Hypermobile joints provide athletes in many sports with a fair advantage. Olympians such as hurdlers, wrestlers and divers are advantaged by a wide range of movement in various joints, and in swimming, extra flexibility in the shoulders helps with the butterfly stroke. In fact in almost every sport coaches promote flexibility, strength and endurance as keys to success. And yet in cricket, extra flexibility in the elbow joint of a bowler’s dominant arm could result in his being branded a cheat and expelled from the game.
Cricket’s Law 24.3 is unyielding and rigid, demanding perfection and nothing less. The relevant part states that “Once the bowler’s arm has reached the level of the shoulder in the delivery swing, the elbow joint is not (to be) straightened partially or completely from that point until the ball has left the hand.” Taken literally this inflexible wording would prohibit people with an excellent range of flexibility from bowling legally.
A hypermobile elbow is one that is capable of flexing or extending beyond what is considered a normal range of motion. According to the Beighton Scale, which tests for hypermobile joints, a single elbow joint must allow the forearm to extend 10 degrees backwards (or past a straight line) before it is considered hypermobile. As many as 15% of the world’s population may have elbow joints which will bend beyond a straight line with little effort and without discomfort to the individual. Those whose elbow joints have a range greater than 10 degrees of flexion beyond a straight line would be somewhere in the vicinity of 5% of the adult population. That’s an enormous amount of people when considered on a worldwide scale, but let’s look at it in terms of the cricket world.
India, for example, has a population in excess of a billion. This means that as many as 150 million people there may be physically unable to bowl without breaking Law 24, and 50 million of them might have elbows which extend backwards more than 10 degrees past a straight line.
Those figures might sound inflated, but in fact they are understated, because Law 24 has far-reaching racial ramifications. Leslie N Russek’s investigations into hypermobility in the Physical Therapy journal (Vol. 79 No. 6, June 1999)) concluded that hypermobility is “more prevalent among Asians than among Africans, and is more prevalent among Africans than among Caucasians”. People from the Indian subcontinent often have much more supple hand-movements than Europeans. This extra range of flexibility in the fingers and wrist can aid in the act of imparting spin on the ball. It is rather ironic, however, that those who may be naturally blessed in the art of spin bowling may be considered to have illegal actions if they put a bit of extra effort into their faster delivery and a flexible elbow becomes apparent.
Another travesty of justice lays in the old adage “Use it or lose it”, when applied to a flexible elbow. Children are much more flexible than adults, and studies have shown that around 13% of children aged 15 are considered hypermobile by the Beighton Scale. Most of these children will fall back into line with what is considered normal by the time they are adults, as through time the various joints lose flexibility with lack of use. But if a joint is continually being stretched under load throughout the formative years, then the flexibility of that joint will not diminish - in fact it may even be enhanced.
It is ludicrous if playing a sport for fun as a child could actually disqualify someone from participating in that sport on a professional basis once he (or she) has reached adulthood. It’s possible that a high proportion of hypermobile elbow joints among adult fast bowlers can be directly linked to bowling fast at a young age.
When a fast bowler is in the process of delivering a ball, a tremendous amount of backwards pressure is applied to the elbow joint. Viewed from side-on, the arm experiences a sharp increase in velocity as it approaches the vertical position. At this point, the weight of the ball at the end of the lever (the arm) creates a drag effect, and the elbow appears to give way as the forearm and ball lag behind. If the forearm bends backwards more than 10 degrees at the point of being stretched tight, then the elbow joint would most likely be classed as hypermobile by the Beighton Scale. By the time the ball is released, it and the forearm have caught up and often overtaken the rest of the arm, in a whiplike action. According to Law 24, this action may be viewed as illegal.
A single two-dimensional camera angle, however, is not sufficient to judge accurately whether, and at which point, a bowler’s elbow joint is bending forward or backwards during delivery. Three-dimensional equipment must be used to negate any optical illusions, created by the numerous angles and joint-rotation factor, prior to the ball being released. But as it stands at the moment a bowler will be judged and taken to the first stage of the ICC’s remedial process based on two-dimensional imagery, and that judge is not usually someone who has any sort of grounding in the science of human movement.
No amount of remedial work can stiffen up a flexible joint, and so stage one and two in the process of helping bowlers to comply with Law 24 are a waste of time where a hypermobile joint is concerned. It is also a blight on the copybook of any bowler who is compelled to undergo this form of public scrutiny. The stigma of having been under suspicion of having an illegal action could last well beyond a bowler’s lifetime.
The reality is that even when a bowler is found not to be throwing and to be hypermobile, this is not enough. On the surface Law 24 appears to make no allowances whatsoever for someone with a hypermobile elbow joint. The assigned panel of so-called experts can let common sense prevail and clear a bowler, making a judgment based on the spirit of the law, but the letter of the law still stands.
**Because of ignorance or arrogance the media and fans alike will often label such a bowler as a “chucker”, a term not found in the Laws but which is understood to be almost interchangeable with the word “cheater”. This incorrect terminology usually denotes that an individual is purposely bowling with an illegal action to gain some sort of unfair advantage. A person with hypermobile joints is most likely advantaged with regards to increased ball velocity, but may be disadvantaged in other areas. Hypermobility has been linked to decreased joint-position sense, making a bowler more vulnerable to minor damage. Reduced sensory feedback may lead to biomechanically unsound limb positions being adopted. Hypermobile athletes also take longer to heal, because supple tissue takes longer to repair and their joints suffer swelling after a workload. **
Benign hypermobility is not a deformity and should not be grouped as such, and to view hypermobility as a defect is wrong and can cause offence. Those with hypermobility do not fit into what we consider to be normal - but neither do those we consider to be terribly tall or super-slim.
The wording of cricket’s Law 24, which can brand a person with an exceptional range of flexibility as illegal, may itself be unlawful. Looking at this law in connection with human rights, it is unlikely that a supreme court would allow a sporting body to disqualify a person from earning an income in his chosen field of endeavour based on an above-average range of flexibility in the elbow joint of his preferred arm.
The ICC should not allow things to get that far, and the wording of Law 24.3 should be changed immediately. Not only should it be changed to tolerate people with a high level of flexibility, but it should be made such to ensure that once a qualified independent body has proved that someone’s action is fair due to an involuntary hyperextension of the elbow, they are certified as cleared to play and that the scientific and medical data is made available for all to see.
Athletes with hypermobility enjoy a level of flexibility that the rest of us can only dream of achieving. For this they should be congratulated - but in cricket they are being castigated.