Murali’s doosra proved virtually unplayable
Muttiah Muralitharan is the greatest wicket-taker in the history of Test cricket. No other bowler in 136 years of international matches has taken more than the Sri Lankan spinner’s haul of 800 wickets in 133 Tests.
Yet, as his biography says on Cricinfo, ‘no cricketer since Douglas Jardine has polarised opinion quite like Muttiah Muralitharan’. The Sydney Morning Herald put it more succinctly in 2004: ‘Murali is either a genius or a cheat, depending on your point of view.’ Pass that protractor, this could get complicated…
Murali, as he was known throughout his eighteen-year Test career, was born with a deformed right elbow. That quirk, combined with incredibly supple wrists and explosively powerful shoulders, allowed him to turn the bowl more than any other finger-spinner had ever done. It was Murali’s ‘doosra’ that proved virtually unplayable to a generation of batsmen, the ball delivered as a normal off-break but with the bowler’s wrist cocked so that all the batsman can see is the back of his hand. On pitching, the doosra spins from leg to off to a right-handed batsman.
Murali made his Test debut against Australia in August 1992, picking up just four wickets in his first two Tests, but by the time of the 1995 Boxing Day Test in Melbourne doubts were being openly expressed in Australia about his action.
As Murali bowled his fourth over from the Great Southern Stand end of the MCG, he was no-balled by umpire Darrell Hair. Six more times in the next few overs the Sydney umpire stuck out an arm and bellowed ‘no-ball’. Exasperated, the Sri Lankans switched Murali to the other end, where New Zealand umpire Steve Dunn remained silent. Sri Lanka were furious, believing it to be a ‘conspiracy’. As the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: ‘With some justification, they questioned why he needed to be humiliated before a big crowd on a huge stage.’
Murali’s doosra proved virtually unplayable
Hair’s actions polarised the cricket world, except in Sri Lanka, where everyone threw their support behind Murali. A charming man, he was the side’s only Tamil and a symbol of unity that the country desperately needed at a time of racial divisions in Sri Lanka. Writing in the Guardian a few days after the incident, former England bowler Mike Selvey called Hair’s actions ‘an absurd pretence’. He added: ‘Muri is undoubtedly a highly skilled bowler, and his action a borderline case which, in technologically advanced times, leaves the umpires in an invidious position. What superhuman skills does the Australian umpire Darrell Hair possess to call Muri for throwing at normal speed, from four strides behind him, when an assortment of camera angles, with the benefits of slow motion, offer opportunity for detailed assessment?’
Hair’s supporters, and he had many, pointed out that the laws of cricket stated that the threshold for the amount of allowable elbow extension, or straightening, for a fast bowler was ten degrees and for a spinner five degrees. Yet biomechanical tests conducted on Murali revealed that because of his deformed elbow his arm couldn’t be straightened past eleven degrees. In other words, he was outside the legal limit by six degrees. When he bowled the doosra, however, his elbow was at a fourteen-degree angle, almost three times the permitted amount for a spinner.
It was a conundrum. Murali wasn’t deliberately throwing the ball, but nonetheless, because of his physiology, he would never be able to straighten his arm to conform to the laws of the game.
The ICC eventually cracked it in 2004 by relaxing the rules on illegal bowling actions, a move that caused as much controversy as Murali’s action. Now, all bowlers were allowed an elbow extension of fifteen degrees, well beyond Murali’s eleven-degree range.
Geoff Boycott was in no doubt why the ICC had relaxed the rule. ‘It’s been brought in through pressure from Sri Lanka and Murali’s supporters,’ he told the BBC. ‘It’s a sad day for cricket that this pressure can allow Muralitharan to bowl whatever he wants.’
Boycott’s view appeared to be borne out by the reaction of the Sri Lankan Cricket Board. ‘We are very happy about it as it means Murali will be able bowl his “doosra”. Sri Lanka Cricket appreciates it very much and we thank the ICC for making such a decision.’
The six years that followed the decision were the most prolific of Murali’s Test career. In one nine-match streak between May 2006 and July 2007 he took eighty-six wickets, including ten for 115 against England and ten for 118 against New Zealand. He finished his extraordinary Test career in July 2010 with an eight-wicket haul against India.
Hair’s actions polarised world cricket
The day after, an article appeared in the Times of India in which the legendary Indian spinner Bishan Singh Bedi wished Murali well. The Sri Lankan was, he said, ‘a wonderful personality, a thinking cricketer and a crafty bowler’. But there was a ‘but’. ‘But he leaves behind a legacy of chucking.’
In Bedi’s mind, as in the minds of millions of other cricket fans, Murali was not a legitimate bowler and certainly not worthy of comparison with the greats of the game. ‘Comparing Murali with the likes of Jim Laker is preposterous,’ he said. ‘The ICC’s experiments with leniency in elbow angles and subjecting Murali to bowling with a cast on his arm was a sham. A chucker can be spotted easily without technology as he has minimal follow-through. This is because the elbow, rather than the shoulder, comes into play. The shoulder doesn’t follow the ball, hence no follow-through.’
Cricket’s greatest spinner or the game’s biggest cheat? You decide.