Published: Feb 07, 2015, 02:05 PM (IST)
Edited: Feb 07, 2015, 02:05 PM (IST)
The International Cricket Council (ICC) today confirmed the bowling actions of Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal and Bangladesh’s Sohag Gazi have been found to be legal, following their remedial work and retests and now the players can resume to bowl in international cricket.
Before the retest, a player who is banned from playing international cricket is required to identify the various types of deliveries he wants assessed with a view to bowling those types of deliveries in international cricket should they be tested as legal.
According to ICC’s press release, at the retests it was publicized that the amount of elbow extensions in both the bowler’s bowling actions for all their deliveries was within the 15-degree level of tolerance and found to be legal under the ICC regulations for the review of bowlers reported with suspected illegal bowling actions.
However, the umpires can still report against Ajmal and Gazi in the future if they feel that they are displaying a suspect action and not replicating their deliveries from the restests. To aid the umpires, they were given with images and video footage of the two bowlers’ drastically remodeled legal bowling actions.
Earlier this year, the retests were performed at the Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai on January 24. Ajmal was reported after the first Test match against Sri Lanka in Galle in August, while Gazi also came under scanner in August after the second One-Day International (ODI) against West Indies in Grenada.
Both these bowlers failed the early tests, which were performed on August 25, 2014 at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane and on September 19, 2014 at the Cardiff Metropolitan University respectively.
