RAWALPINDI: Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar might again have to travel to Australia after the series against India to get his bowling action scrutinized at the department of human movement sciences of the University of Western Australia.
According to sources close to the Indian team, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has responded to a letter sent by the Indians to them after the bowling action of Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan was reported by
the umpires last month in Sri Lanka.
The sources told “The News” that the Indians through their board had sent a letter to the ICC asking it to also once again review the bowling action of Shoaib Akhtar who they felt ‘chucked’ quite a few times during an over and the batsmen were facing problems sighting his ball when he bowled short.
Former Indian batsman Dilip Vengsarkar had also written in his column few days back
that the ICC needed to have a look at Shoaib’s action as he ‘chucked’.
Sources said that the Indian team in Rawalpindi has now received information from their board that the ICC has indicated to it that it would be asking the Pakistan board after the series to send Shoaib to Australia for another review process of his bowling action.
Shoaib, who is ranked as the world’s fastest bowler having twice broken the 100mph speed barrier was reported for a suspect action in December 1999, 2000 and finally in February 2001.
After the February 2001 call during the one-day series in New Zealand he was sent to the University of Western Australia by the Pakistan board where he worked with biomechanics specialist Dr Bruce Elliot, Australian bowling coach Daryl Foster and former great Dennis Lillee to sort out problems in his bowling action.
The department of human movement sciences in its report to the ICC and PCB said that there was nothing wrong with Shoaib’s action as he had unusual hyper movement in his body joints including the bowling arm and that at times gave the illusion he was ‘chucking.’ After this report the ICC had cleared Shoaib’s action on medical grounds and since than he has faced no problems at all from any umpire.
But the sources said that the Indian camp had been persistent in its views that his action was suspect and wanted the ICC to do something about it specially after they had taken action on Muralitharan after such a long time.
Critics have been surprised at the ICC decision to scrutinize the bowling action of Muralitharan after he has taken over 500 test wickets but the sources said that the decision was taken because the ICC was getting cold feet on the fact that lot of young players were modeling their bowling action on his.
And proof of this came during the ICC Youth World Cup held in Bangladesh earlier this year when a special ICC scrutiny committee of bowling experts found three to four bowlers having suspect actions having modeled themselves on Murli. One of them included Pakistan’s most successful bowler in the tournament, Tariq Mahmood.
They also confirmed that after pressure from some teams the ICC had decided to tackle the issue of bowlers with suspect actions afresh which is why Muralitharan and now Shoaib might be in line for a review of his action.
Indian captain Saurav Ganguly had raised questions about Shoaib’s action soon after the first one-dayer in Karachi but retracted his statement on the instructions of the match-referee Ranjan Madugalle and when Shoaib went to his hotel room and confronted him about his allegations.
I am not sure if this has been posted but this is very interesting if its true.