Published: Oct 13, 2014, 01:34 PM (IST)
Edited: Oct 13, 2014, 02:37 PM (IST)
Oct 13, 2014
Former ICC Test umpire of Emirates Elite panel, Darrell Hair has criticised the umpires for officiating poorly in the matches against chucking. He believes it is the reason why chucking has grown over the years and has also said that the crackdown introduced by the ICC on the bowlers reported has come late after two decades.
Saeed Ajmal, Pakistan’s star spinner who was recently banned by the ICC from bowling in the international matches came as a shock and concern to most of the bowlers in the international cricket after he was found guilty of bending his elbow more than the permitted bend of 15 degrees while bowling.
Hair was famous for detaining legendary Sri Lankan spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan during the 1995 Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for the same offence and believes that the ICC should have taken action back then itself.
“Whatever they’re doing now, they’re doing 20 years too late. They had a chance in 1995 to clean things up and it’s taken them 19 years to finally come back and say they want chuckers out of the game,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I can’t believe that Saaed Ajmal has been able to bowl as long as he has, and they say he is bending his arm by 45 degrees or something. Well, every man and his dog would have known that. I suppose what it does show is the general weakness of the umpires over time to do anything about it,” he added.
Hair’s fellow-mate, Ross Emerson too charged Murali of throwing, but was cleared by the ICC after a biomechanical test. He later on also became the highest wicket-taker in Test Cricket.
Hair explained that Emerson was treated poorly after he made the call during the Sri Lanka-England ODI match following which he stepped down and never officiated in any other international match as the umpires were disinclined to report for the suspect action.
“The fact was that no other ICC umpires were willing to have a go. Ross Emerson was very adamant about his thoughts about chuckers but they soon put him into the background,” he said.
“I suppose I was lucky I had a few games under my belt so they didn’t want to target me, but they certainly got him out of the way fairly swiftly. It’ll be interesting to see how many umpires are brave enough to get involved in it. I said it in the late ’90s that if something wasn’t done about it you’d have a generation of chuckers on your hands and now you have,” he added.
However, the crackdown has been hugely acclaimed by most of the cricketers and experts around the world whereas many believe that this could have adverse effect on the bowlers and the team as well leading to the World Cup with just few months to go.
