Bedi flays 'javelin thrower' Murali

Even though two expert panels have cleared Muthiah Muralitharan of chucking charges, the Sri Lankan off-spinner's bowling action has once again come under attack, this time from spin wizard Bishen Singh Bedi, who has also questioned the away-going delivery of India's own Harbhajan Singh.

"If Murali doesn't chuck, then show me how to bowl," Bedi, one of the most successful and respected spin bowlers the world has ever seen, has said in an interview published in the February issue of Wisden Cricket Asia .

"How can you call it bowling? He (Muralitharan) has no follow-through and he makes no use of his shoulders. Murali's arm doesn't go up at all. I have a picture of him bowling somewhere. He looks like a good javelin thrower," he said.

The expert panels constituted by the International Cricket Council concluded that the abnormality in the Sri Lankan's action was the result of a slight bend in his bowling arm, a natural deformity, and therefore could not be accused ofhucking. But Bedi is not ready to buy this argument.

"It's just too bad, honestly. Some people are born blind... Will a blind man be allowed to fly an aircraft? So why should a bowler be allowed to chuck because he has a defective arm?

"What does not conform to law is illegal and the law has to be applied uniformly. The problem is that the parent body (ICC) is not taking cognisance. It may soon become monstrous - every team may end up with three or four chuckers," he said.

Bedi also minced no words against all modern-day off- spinners, including Harbhajan, who bowl the away-going delivery.

"In the good old days, it was called the floater. It was bowled using the shoulder, like an outswinger. You bowled it with the off-spinner's action, but without imparting any spin. You rolled it, and put in a little extra shoulder, so the ball drifted away.

"(But) now they do it with their elbows and wrists. And they do it at a good 90 to 95 km per hour - whereas an arm- ball or a floater is at the same speed as the normal ball. It is an illegitimate ball.

"Now what's this 'doosra' thing? It's like the other woman," Bedi said. "Anyone using the elbow to turn it the other way is doing it illegally," he said.

Bedi blamed one-day cricket for the steady decline of classical spin bowling.

"The very concept of one-day cricket is anti-spin bowling. By his very nature, the spinner must buy his wickets, must encourage the batsmen to go after him. One- day cricket demands that the spinner alter his fundamentals. It has reduced genuine wicket-taking bowlers to containing bowlers.

"Today, what's the difference between a Harbhajan Singh and bowlers like Sourav Ganguly or Ian Harvey? They all are trying to do the same thing," he said.

A left-arm spinner with one of the most beautiful actions which got him over 1500 wickets in first class cricket, Bedi believes that the problem with Muralitharan is the way he imparts spin to the ball.

Mail Cricket Editor