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Three of the world’s top-six ranked one day international bowlers have been either banned or reported for suspect bowling actions in the past month.
Five bowlers were reported during the recently-completed Champions Trophy T20 tournament.
The world’s third-ranked T20 bowler, Sachithra Senanayake, is currently prohibited from playing cricket. And Pakistan has reported 28 local bowlers over their actions during the country’s domestic season.
Just how far will this new crackdown on chucking go?
Pakistan off-spinner Saeed Ajmal cannot play cricket, while his teammate Mohammad Hafeez and West Indian star Sunil Narine were both reported for suspect actions in the Champions League.
Ajmal is the best bowler in international cricket, taking into account all three formats. Narine and Hafeez have not made a big impact on Test cricket but are elite short-form bowlers. The West Indian is almost the most valuable T20 player in the world. Yet it is possible that both Narine and Hafeez soon could join Ajmal on the International Cricket Council’s banned list.
That pair were lucky they were reported while playing in the Champions League rather than in international cricket. The Champions League rules on bowling actions, dictated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, are less stringent than those of the ICC.
Narine and Hafeez were placed on a ‘warning list’ after their reports, with the proviso that if they were reported again in the tournament they’d be sidelined. Narine was called a second time by the umpires, was banned from playing in the final, and has been withdrawn from his country’s squad for their current tour of India.
The Champions Trophy reports have no bearing on the ability of Narine or Hafeez to play international cricket. But they will have put both bowlers on the radar of every international umpire.
The actions of Narine and Hafeez will be heavily scrutinised by ICC officials in their next international outings. The world cricketing body has launched an unprecedented crackdown on bowling actions this year.
And the focus is no longer just on doosras. Narine was reportedly put on notice because of concerns that he flexed his arm too much when sending down his quicker balls.
His West Indian teammate Marlon Samuels late last year was banned by the ICC from bowling his faster delivery.
A third West Indian, Shane Shillingford, received a ban from the ICC around the same time after testing found that he flexed his arm by more than the permitted 15 degrees even when delivering his stock off-spinner
Hafeez, meanwhile, was found during ICC testing to flex his arm by more than double the permitted 15 degrees during all of his deliveries.
The heat so far has been on off spinners, as you would expect. It is nigh-on impossible to chuck a leg spin delivery, while there have been few fast bowlers in modern history with genuinely suspect actions.
But the success of Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan and, more recently, the likes of Ajmal, Narine and Hafeez seems to be encouraging emerging off spinners to exploit the 15 degrees of flex rule.
It is such a problem in Pakistan that not only have Ajmal and Hafeez been banned and reported, respectively, but one of the off spinners in contention to replace Ajmal in the Test team, Adnan Rasool, was also reported in recent weeks.
Even more astoundingly, there were 28 cases of suspect bowling actions during the recent Pakistan domestic T20 competition, according to website The Cricket Country.
Chucking has become a disease which is rapidly spreading through the cricketing population. The ICC’s move to crackdown on suspect actions is long overdue, but admirable nonetheless.
More high-profile casualties are likely. Watch this space.