Cricket: Doubts raised over chuckers

Kane Williamson, seen at the crease for Yorkshire, was banned from bowling due to an illegal action. Photo / Getty

The toughening up by the International Cricket Council on bowlers who throw has put it at loggerheads with an agency long involved in the testing procedures.

And the University of Western Australia, on whom the ICC has relied for the last 20 years to test illegal actions, have slammed the ''ridiculous" secrecy surrounding new procedures.

In turn, doubts have been raised over the reliability of recent tests. Among a raft of bowlers caught and forced to undergo remedial treatment to fix their actions is New Zealand's part time offspinner Kane Williamson.

The biggest names suspended are Pakistan's doosra bowler Saeed Ajmal, fingered by officials during a test match, and West Indian Sunil Narine, who was sidelined during the Champions League T20.

New testing centres are up and running in Brisbane, Cardiff and Chennai. UWA biomechanists have called that ''extraordinary" and questioned the wisdom of having tests carried out by relatively inexperienced staff with limited training.

Jacqueline Alderson, an associate professor in biomechanics at UWA, suggests that her team is ''astounded" by the limited opportunities for peer-to-peer reviews of the model used to measure elbow extensions, and by a general lack of information provided to the home boards or the testing centres carrying out the work.

The ICC, however, believes the current system is more scientifically advanced than in the past, is utilising well qualified scientists to review procedures and that the Western Australian facility has been excluded due to a deteriorating relationship between the two parties.

It also wants to get away from using just one provider and having a spread of facilities allows bowlers more opportunity to more quickly remedy their problematic actions.
Lawyers were involved in the breakdown between the ICC and UWA resulting in the testing facility withdrawing its services from earlier this year.

''We were initially aggrieved by the ICC leveraging our research without our knowledge or permission,'' Alderson told ESPNcricinfo. ''However that is now compounded by the lack of transparency surrounding the current testing."