WisdenEXTRA • Chucking special 1© John Wisden & Company Limited 2014 Wisden is a trademark of John Wisden & Company Limited

The last time Wisden EXTRA landed in your inbox, in July, our front page declared: “The Big Three era starts now”. Around that time, the ICC Board met in Melbourne, and resolved to tackle an issue which had been vexing its Cricket Committee and many others: why were so many unorthodox spinners, with seemingly elastic elbows, not pulled up for throwing? Since then, five off-spinners have been suspended from bowling in international cricket, and others put on notice. Wally Edwards, chairman of Cricket Australia and head of the ICC’s influential ExCo body, left little room for ambiguity when he declared recently, and rather politically: “The clampdown is an example of a more effective ICC. This would not have been possible previous to the [governance] changes that have been introduced.”

To most people, there seems little wrong with catching suspect actions. But some thought the ICC might have been more open about it all. It took fine investigative reporting from George Dobell, ESPNCricinfo’s senior correspondent, to uncover the finer points behind the ICC’s transfer of responsibilities from a single testing centre in Perth, to four others in England, Australia and India. The clampdown has had the effect of denying several other international teams their first-choice off-spinner, who might have been expected to deliver ten tidy overs in the middle of an innings at the World Cup. Cricket doesn’t need much excuse for a conspiracy theory right now.

The current procedure for dealing with a suspect action is that umpires outline any concerns in their post-match report. However, perhaps because Saeed Ajmal had been cleared by the ICC in 2009, ECB

WisdenEXTRAChucking special

The big boys flex their muscles

Eagar’s Eye Patrick Eagar, the doyen of cricket photographers, has taken his camera to cricket for more than 45 years. Usually it’s the batsmen – plus a fair few bowlers – who grab the limelight, but look beyond the obvious, and the beating heart of a team is often the man with the outsize gloves. In the following pages, Patrick chooses ten of his favourite keepers, from Godfrey Evans to Geraint Jones – and one or two without a Welsh name, besides.

No. 13, November 2014

umpires seemed reluctant to report him as he was bowling Worcestershire to victory after victory in the first half of the 2014 County Championship season, never mind when he played for MCC against the Rest of the World at Lord’s. He left in July to play for Pakistan, was promptly reported – and found to be way over the 15-degree limit.

Whatever the truth, the present system is surely better than the public humiliation of being no-balled for throwing, as happened to Muttiah Muralitharan in the 1990s, or Geoff Griffin in 1960. We republish Griffin’s obituary here, because it remains one of the most poignant in Wisden’s history. As Dr Mark King, the head tester at Loughborough, told Richard Gibson in these pages, a bowler whose action is under scrutiny is likely under a great deal of stress. We would do well to remember that sometimes.

The year 2004 crops up throughout this issue, as it was the year the ICC adopted its 15-degree rule. Yet the spinners on show at Lord’s in May 2004, for Liam Cromar’s My First Test, were the reliably orthodox left-armers Ashley Giles and Daniel Vettori. Liam was the second winner of our writing competition, which we are running again. If you haven’t entered yet, you have until the end of November to send us your article. There’s also the chance to win some high-quality booze in our competition sponsored by Hardys Wine. In the meantime, please continue to let us know what you think about Wisden EXTRA.

James Coyne

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151 editions of the world’s most famous sports book

The ICC’s clampdown, a few months out from the next World Cup, is world cricket’s first concerted attempt for a decade to tackle chucking. Andrew Miller asks whether too many bowlers have been cutting corners

The Big Hit

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15 degrees

of

separation

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continued overleafBen Hoskins, Getty Images

Saeed Ajmal sends a doosra past Kevin Pietersen in the MCC v Rest of the World game at Lord’s in July

Playing corridor cricket at school, I was a savagely effective spin bowler. With left arm or right, wrist cocked forward or back, I obtained teasing flight and prodigious bite on bare wooden floorboards and fire-retardant carpet tiles alike. With a flick of the fingers from a stationary position, I could spit a standard tennis ball one way then the other at will, before pinging in that quicker flatter one that rarely let me down.

Of course, I chucked every single delivery. But no one seemed to mind – there was no room for run-ups between the two sets of fire doors and, besides, my peers enjoyed the challenge of fending off my spitting cobras. It made a limited contest more interesting and, to use the buzzword de nos jours, increased participation levels among the class of 1996 no end. However, there was never any question I could employ such tactics in a real game, where my ropey straight-armed leg-spin was as forgettable as it was hittable.

On England’s tour of Sri Lanka in 2007-08, participation levels weren’t a problem either. During the first Test at Kandy every inch of spare space, both inside the Asgiriya Stadium and beyond, was taken up by kids playing cricket. Ninety percent of the bowlers on display were blatant chuckers but, again, no-one seemed to mind. After all, they were merely modelling their actions on their national hero, Muttiah Muralitharan, who would finish that match as the world’s leading Test wicket-taker, a record that will surely never be broken.

The rights and the wrongs of Murali’s action have been debated for more than 20 years and, like the ECB’s treatment of Kevin Pietersen, the more the issue is discussed the more entrenched the opinions become. What seems indisputable, however, is that by sanctioning an action as effective as it was unique, the ICC sowed the seeds of an epidemic that, rightly or wrongly, they have chosen this year to clamp down on.

Just as indisputably, the recent proliferation of so-called doosra bowlers has offered a put-upon genre, the finger-spinner, a new opportunity for relevance. In an era of shorter boundaries, springier bats and ever more carefree strokeplay, the traditional merits of finger-spin have been turned on their heads. Containment, not attack, is the order of the day, so when England were routed by Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal in the UAE in 2011-12, most neutral observers were delighted. His combination of flight, guile and movement both ways offered a throwback to a more varied era – if you could take your eyes off his flappy elbow, that is.

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Now, however, Ajmal is one of a raft of off-spinners to have been suspended by the ICC for a suspect action. It doesn’t take much to fuel a conspiracy theory in cricket’s current climate, so here are two big reasons to be suspicious of the sudden purge: the timing, with a World Cup looming and no significant suspects being reported in any of cricket’s Big Three nations (India, England and Australia); and the hush-hush rejigging of the ICC’s accredited testing centres, with Cardiff, Brisbane, Chennai and Loughborough taking over from the board’s long-term partners, the University of Western Australia in Perth.

However, there is also a fundamental cricketing reason for the clampdown. Namely, a concern among traditional spin bowlers (yes, particularly those from the Big Three) that the drive to create a new generation of mystery bowlers is causing liberties to be taken in the teaching of the basic art of finger-spin.

“I don’t think we realise quite how far our standards have fallen,” says Pat Pocock, who played 25 Tests for England – and over 550 first-class matches – in an era rich with finger-spinning options. The nub of the problem, he believes, is that finger-spinning is taken too literally when young bowlers attempt to impart revolutions on the ball.

“The wrist is the biggest area of the whole body when it comes to creating deception in flight,” says Pocock. “Yet no one knows about it. When you throw a ball you have three items: the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist. You synchronise them, and get power into the ball. When you spin the ball you have two items, the fingers and the wrist. The problem with encouraging young cricketers to bowl the doosra is that they forget to learn to spin the ball properly in the first place.”

For all the brickbats that have been flung his way over the years, no-one has ever tried to claim that Murali couldn’t spin a cricket ball. And in fact, as the broadcaster Mark Nicholas revealed in a memorable segment on Channel 4 in summer 2004 when Murali was asked to bowl in the nets at Lord’s in a steel-reinforced elbow brace, the kink in his action was of far less consequence than the helicopter rotation of a wrist that was, according to Nicholas, “uncanny in its elasticity”.

“He still spun the ball, though not as much, and he could still bowl the doosra, though not with as much venom,” says Nicholas. “I felt it was proof that there is something of an illusion in his action, with two unusual quirks to the functions of his physique. When we matched it to footage of him bowling in a Test there was definitely a bit more going on, as the scientists later proved, but it wasn’t as dramatically extreme as the human eye felt it to be.”

Those scientists came to the fore when, in November 2004, the ICC introduced a new rule offering 15 degrees of tolerance to all bowlers. It was, in essence, an endorsement of the doosra, but equally it was an act of self-preservation on the part of the governing body. If a bowler with an action as flawless

as, say, Glenn McGrath could be shown to be flexing his elbow at the point of delivery – and that is what was shown – it was an open invitation for all banned players to issue lawsuits. The ICC carried out research during the 2004 Champions Trophy in England, and found that, of all bowlers, the clubbable leg-spinner Ramnaresh Sarwan was the only one whose arm did not straighten.

“The use of the wrist in off-spin is inconsistent and difficult,” says Nicholas, “even more so than for a leg-spinner because it comes out of the back of the hand, not the front. It takes an awful lot of work to get it right, but these days, with shorter boundaries and heavier bats, it’s very difficult for a finger-spinner to risk those bad balls because they want to stay in the team.”

One such bowler bucked the global trend in recent years. Graeme Swann used a traditional wrist-laden method to provide England with a consistent attacking threat that his contemporaries could only replicate in helpful conditions – most notably Monty Panesar, whose uncannily long fingers offered him control, but deprived him of variety. The fact that Swann had to wait almost eight years between a one-off one-day international and his Test debut in 2008 is almost certainly no coincidence. It enabled him to hone his craft away from the international glare, and develop the exemplary wrist control that set him apart from his peers.

Swann compares his wrist movement to the action of opening a door, but by jamming the ball deep into his knuckles as he does so, he obtains the prodigious revolutions that aid his deception. “Flight is more important than spin [off the wicket],” he says, “because if the ball is going dead straight through the air, even if it spins off the ground the batsman can line it up and hit it. The harder you spin it, the more the ball floats away.”

Nevertheless, the ICC’s clampdown smacks of kill or cure. It stems, in no small part, from India’s embarrassment back in 2008, when the first season of IPL offered the world a glimpse of their domestic spin arrangements, and no fewer than 70 bowlers ended up being reported for suspect actions. That England and Australia have also backed the moves comes as little surprise. Doosra bowling is now on the ECB’s spin syllabus, but it wasn’t until Headingley this summer that Moeen Ali became the first Englishman to unveil the delivery in a Test match.

As for Australia, back in June they appeared ready to give Darrell Hair and Ross Emerson conniptions by appointing Murali, of all people, as a spin consultant. John Inverarity, Cricket Australia’s chairman of selectors until earlier this year, said in 2012 that their stance on the doosra was “a matter of integrity” – and it was noticeable that Murali was instead helping Nathan Lyon and Glenn Maxwell develop the carrom ball as their variation of choice. Yet, as Murali himself explained, there may have been a simple reason. “I am mainly a wrist-spinner,” he said, “so to change the wrist position

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is easy, but for a finger-spinner to change direction to bowl a doosra is harder.”

And therein lies the rub. For, as Pocock points out, accomplished practitioners of the doosra seem thinner on the ground than the current glut of reported bowlers would imply. “There are about four people in the world who bowl the doosra well,” he says, “and all of them have suspect actions. So what is the point in teaching it?

Nasir Aziz (UAE)Reported #1 v Uganda at Dubai, ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, November 15, 2013Umpires/Match Referee: R. E. J. Martinesz, I. N. Ramage; D. Govindjee; C. ShamsuddinTested: Emirates Cricket BoardCleared: November 23, 2013

Reported #2 : v Ireland, ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, November 29, 2013Umpires/Match Referee: M. A. Gough, R. E. J. Martinesz; S. J. Davis; D. T. Jukes; D. J. WalkerTested: University of Western Australia, PerthCleared: (warned against bowling doosra): January 31, 2014

M. N. Samuels (West Indies)Reported: Second Test v India at Mumbai, November 16, 2013Umpires/Match Referee: R. A. Kettleborough, N. J. Llong; V. A. Kulkarni; A. J. PycroftTested: University of Western Australia, PerthCleared: (not permitted to bowl quicker ball): December 16, 2013

S. Shillingford (West Indies)Reported: Second Test v India at Mumbai, November 16, 2013Umpires/Match Referee: R. A. Kettleborough, N. J. Llong; V. A. Kulkarni; A. J. PycroftTested: University of Western Australia, PerthSuspended: December 16, 2013Cleared (not permitted to bowl doosra): March 25, 2014

S. M. S. M. Senanayake (Sri Lanka)Reported: Fourth ODI v England at Lord’s, May 31, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: M. Erasmus, I. J. Gould; C. B. Gaffaney; J. J. CroweTested: Cardiff Metropolitan UniversitySuspended: July 12, 2014

K. S. Williamson (New Zealand)Reported: Second Test v West Indies at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, June 20, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: I. J. Gould, R. J. Tucker; R. K. Illingworth; B. C. BroadTested: Cardiff Metropolitan UniversitySuspended: July 23, 2014

Saeed Ajmal (Pakistan)Reported: First Test v Sri Lanka at Galle, August 10, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: I. J. Gould, B. N. J. Oxenford; R. K. Illingworth; A. J. PycroftTested: Australia National Cricket Centre, BrisbaneSuspended: September 9, 2014

P. Utseya (Zimbabwe)Reported: Third ODI v South Africa at Bulawayo, August 21, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: C. B. Gaffaney, T. J. Matibiri; O. Chirombe; R. S. MahanamaTested: Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityBanned: October 8, 2014

Sohag Gazi (Bangladesh)Reported: Second ODI v West Indies at St George’s, Grenada, August 22, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: Aleem Dar, G. O. Brathwaite; R. A. Kettleborough; J. J. CroweTested: Cardiff Metropolitan UniversitySuspended: October 8, 2014

Al-Amin Hossain (Bangladesh)Reported: First Test v West Indies at Kingstown, St Vincent, September 9, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: M. Erasmus, R. K. Illingworth; S. J. Davis; R. S. MahanamaTested: Sri Ramachandra University, ChennaiCleared November 5, 2014

Mohammad Hafeez (Pakistan)Reported: Lahore v Dolphins, Champions League at Bangalore, September 27, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena, V. A. Kulkarni; A. K. Chaudhary; A. J. PycroftPlaced on Champions League “warning list”; no suspension or testing required

S. P. Narine (West Indies)Reported #1: Kolkata v Dolphins, Champions League at Hyderabad, September 29, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: A. K. Chaudhary, C. Shamshuddin; H. D. P. K. Dharmasena; A. J. PycroftPlaced on Champions League “warning list”; no suspension or testing required

Reported #2: Kolkata v Hobart, Champions League semi-final at Bangalore, October 2, 2014Umpires/Match Referee: S. Ravi, R. J. Tucker; V. A. Kulkarni; J. SrinathSuspended: October 2, 2014 (for Champions League final only)Narine was subsequently withdrawn by West Indies for their tour of India, to “have the opportunity to have his action assessed and plan his return to cricket”

Under the scannerIn the past 12 months, ten off-spinners (plus Al-Amin Hossain, a seamer), who all might expect to play in the 2015 World Cup, have been reported for a suspect bowling action

Let’s get young bowlers to spin the ball properly first!”But can cricket’s ever-changing climate offer enough

shelter for spinners to remaster the art? Only time will tell whether the evolution of the off-spinner has passed the point of no return.

Andrew Miller is a former editor of The Cricketer magazine

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Mark Boucher often had an unorthodox, but whole-hearted, approach. This is back in 1998, in the second of the Texaco Trophy one-day games, and he’s doing his darnedest to run out Alec Stewart. On this occasion, he didn’t get his man, but for the next 14 years, Boucher was his athletic and acrobatic self – until that dreadful accident at Taunton ended his career. You can tell from the lack of shadows the light wasn’t great and, looking back now, I’m slightly surprised I was using colour film, not black and white. To be technical for a moment, it was impossible to get a decent transparency film faster than 400 ASA, which meant motion blur was a real danger in this sort of light. From a photographer’s point of view, run-outs are often tricky: batsmen can run as wide as they like as they dive for the crease, and the last thing you want is half a person at the side of the frame!

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Eagar’s Eye 1

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From the Archive Wisden 2005

Across the ages, apart from match-fixing and political interference from outside its walls, cricket has wrestled with no more contentious issue than suspect bowling actions. The complaints against Arthur Mold which W. G. Grace piped through his whiskers in the 1890s were paraphrased and purpled up more than a century later by Nasser Hussain and directed at Muttiah Muralitharan. The 1998 edition of the Wisden Book of Cricket Records has a disconcerting four-page list of bowlers who have been no-balled for throwing.

The pioneers of overarm bowling, before its legalisation in 1864, were dubbed “throwers” simply because they raised their arms above the permitted level. Earlier still, curious underhand deliveries, as purveyed by the Hambledon ace David Harris, involved kinky elbow movement, but nobody complained.

It was the turn of the 20th century before cricket began to catch up with those who threw in the modern sense. Sydney Pardon, Wisden editor from 1891 to 1925, played a key role in eliminating the scourge of throwing when it first became rampant. He condemned the actions of Ernie Jones and Tom McKibbin after Australia’s 1896 tour of England (adding a dollop of diplomacy by stating that it was all England’s fault: the Australians were merely copying).

A big, fearless, itinerant Australian umpire, Jim Phillips, finished the job. Having called Jones once in a state match and once in a Melbourne Test during 1897-98, Phillips came over to England and dealt with somebody at the other end of the social scale, the eminent Mr C. B. Fry, whose action had been widely condemned. Encouraged, other umpires then called

Fry. Editor Pardon was ecstatic. “A case of long-delayed justice,” he called it. Fry thereafter concentrated on his batting.

But Phillips returned and dealt with a far more significant threat, the Lancashire and England fast bowler Arthur Mold, called by Phillips at Trent Bridge in 1900 and then again, 16 times in ten overs, at Old Trafford against Somerset the next year. Between the two seasons the county captains had agreed not to use 14 bowlers regarded as suspect; Mold’s captain, Archie MacLaren, was the one dissenter, so more direct action had become essential.

Film of Mold, recently discovered, reveals a bowling action seemingly without blemish. It was shot at Old Trafford in 1901, the day after Phillips had called him the last time. Mold was now conscious of being filmed, and was probably not only on his best behaviour but below his lethal top speed. Still, he vanished from first-class cricket, and thereafter reckoned that his career (1,673 low-cost wickets) amounted to nothing. The game was cleansed – for the time being.

The outbreak of chucking more than half a century later was eventually put down just as dramatically and symbolically in 1963 by the no-balling of Ian Meckiff, the Australian left-armer, four times in an over by Col Egar in the Brisbane Test against South Africa. This was another intervention carried out by an umpire of strong character who knew he was backed by the administrators.

Forty years on [in 2004], the issue has returned to

It’s possible that David Frith has watched more bowlers on film than anyone. Ten years ago, after Muttiah Muralitharan’s doosra riled the traditionalists, he told the story of one of cricket’s great slurs

Bent: a history of chucking

continued overleaf

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Bent: a history of chucking

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Chris Read has had a patchy international career, but in 2006 he was drafted back in to the side to face Pakistan when the selectors decided Geraint Jones’s batting had tailed off. Trouble was, Read’s batting wasn’t much better. His glovework, though, was very tidy. Here he’s performing one of the keeper’s tasks that, in the right hands, simply become invisible: tidying up a wayward throw from the outfield. There’s a pleasing shape about this one, and the light and shade – so distinctive of late afternoon at The Oval – turn an ordinary moment into something a little special.

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Eagar’s Eye 3

This was the Fourth Ashes Test of the 1974-75 series, played at Sydney, and Tony Greig had advanced down the wicket to Ashley Mallett. I can’t remember whether he was playing an attacking stroke, but Greig was beaten in the air, and Rod Marsh, the combative – and archetypally Aussie – keeper, had the bails off in a flash. Sometimes it’s good to have a loose shot, and here you can see the reactions of the various fielders. Greig was top-scorer in the innings, out for 54, as England hurtled towards defeat. John Edrich watches from the other end.

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the top of the agenda. And today, the ICC have devised a new system of dealing with the problem, the accent being on discreet behind-the-scenes action, thus commendably sparing erring bowlers any on-field humiliation. The complication is that the central figure in the latest “does he, doesn’t he?” saga twirled his way to the top of the world’s Test bowling table. At a time when international and racial tensions in cricket have been touchier than at any other point in history, the introduction of the name Muralitharan into a cricket discussion can be relied upon to divide any room outside Sri Lanka.

This scientific age has thrown up developments unimagined in Meckiff ’s day, let alone Mold’s. While Eadweard Muybridge in the 1890s demonstrated, using 24 cameras, that horses do indeed have all four hooves off the ground during the gallop, so the modern 1,000-plus-frames-a-second television camera has allowed scientists to calibrate the movement in a bowler’s elbow and shoulder joints. From this has sprung the ground-breaking finding that the arm of just about every bowler inadvertently flexes in the act of bowling.

A “levels of tolerance” scheme emerged whereby fast bowlers were permitted a maximum flex of ten degrees, medium-pacers 7.5 degrees, and spinners five degrees. Biomechanical examination in Perth established that Muralitharan’s bowling arm sometimes straightened 14 degrees. It was official. Under this ruling, he threw – sometimes, at least. Sri Lanka’s cricket board immediately sought flexibility of another kind: Muralitharan’s arm speed, it was claimed, was so

swift that he should be given special dispensation to straighten the limb more than five degrees in delivering the ball. For the time being it was agreed that his doosra (off-spinner’s googly) should be withheld from his repertoire. Batsmen found it hard enough to spot, so the umpires’ job was complicated further with this added demand to detect any doosra slipped in.

Resentment boils over when bowlers are perceived not only to be transgressing but winning Test matches. England captain Peter May barred 1958-59 tour manager F. R. Brown from lodging an official complaint about Meckiff ’s action (which the bowler later amended, only to lose his effectiveness before reverting back).

May did not want England to be seen as squealing. But when Meckiff ’s six for 38 at Melbourne won an Ashes Test, a section of the English press gave vent to its indignation, which had been brewing at the sight of dubious bowling actions all across Australia. Predictably, the Poms were branded as whingers anyway.

This was a pointer to the seed of the problem, a seed which keeps regenerating. The longer a suspect bowler plays without remedial action, the greater the shock when the Laws finally catch up with him. “How could he be throwing?” they cry. “He’s played all over the place for years and never been called!” Beside the point, M’Lud.

When Darrell Hair tried to emulate Phillips

Buttoned up: Sonny Ramadhin, who later admitted to chucking, bowls at Fenner’s in May 1957. A 22-year-old Ted Dexter backs up.

PA Photos

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and Egar by calling Muralitharan for throwing at Melbourne in 1995, the response reached new heights of indignation. Media hysteria and threats to his person followed. The matter, Hair later wrote, had become “a political and religious hot potato”. The claim that Muralitharan was incapable of straightening his arm (an echo of the bent-arm action of Australia’s off-spinner Ian Johnson, whose name still brings a knowing smile from contemporaries) was brushed aside by Hair in his subsequent book.

Thereafter, the ICC kept umpire Hair well away from Sri Lanka’s matches. But they couldn’t stop him from revealing some embarrassing details in his book Decision Maker. A few days after he and his fellow umpire had filed reports to the ICC concerning the bowling actions of two other Sri Lankans, Kumar Dharmasena and Ruwan Kalpage, the ACB [now Cricket Australia] and the match referee instructed them not to call any Sri Lankan bowler. Hair indiscreetly wrote his book while still on the umpires panel, and his use of the word “diabolical” in respect of Muralitharan’s action led to a warning from the ICC for “bringing cricket into disrepute”.

However, feelings in Australia grew regardless. Another Australian umpire, Ross Emerson, called Muralitharan; even the prime minister, John Howard, eventually said that he was a chucker, and the man who was by then the leading Test wicket-taker of all time decided to give the 2004 tour of Australia a miss.

New Zealander Ken Rutherford had written that the entire New Zealand team considered Muralitharan’s action was not right from time to time, albeit unintentionally. “He just picked up an action when he was a little kid in backyard games… during the early days of his career when he could have corrected it, no one was around to coach him and correct him.”

Therein lies the second alarming reality: bowlers’ actions are innocently but eagerly copied by the juvenile masses. That was the greatest underlying danger of both Bodyline and the West Indies fast-bowling excesses of the 1980s (another period characterised by weak umpiring). Suddenly, every lad believed this was the way to play cricket. There is an enormous burden of responsibility on the shoulders of coaches, selectors and captains, as well as umpires.

Umpires have often looked in vain for the backing of the authorities who appointed them. The great Frank Chester was not alone in being convinced that South Africa’s 1951 tourist Cuan McCarthy was a thrower, but the influential and incurable appeaser P. F. “Plum” Warner urged him to hold his fire, pleading: “These people are our guests.” Chester thereafter gazed ostentatiously into the distance while standing at square leg whenever McCarthy bowled.

However, just a few years before Egar acted against Meckiff, another South African, Geoff Griffin, was central to one of the most grotesque chapters in Test history. He was a shaky selection for the England tour in 1960, having been called for throwing while playing

for Natal. He was then no-balled by six different umpires in three of the lead-up matches in England, and in the Lord’s Test’s he was called 11 times by Frank Lee, and then again by Syd Buller in the exhibition match that followed the early finish.

This made the Australians fearful that their bowlers might be similarly humiliated, and for a time the 1961 Ashes tour was under threat. The two countries called a truce: the umpires were instructed to make private reports in the modern manner, and the Australian team were selected carefully.

Slower bowlers may profit from throwing just as effectively as the fast men. Much more than Johnson, the Australian off-spinner Jim Burke was a standing joke, although Peter May, for one, didn’t think it funny when blatantly chucked out for 92 in a Sydney Test. Surrey and England left-arm match-winner Tony Lock became a thrower after protracted bowling at indoor nets, where the low roof caused him to abandon flight. When he knocked Doug Insole’s stumps over in a county match, the bemused batsman enquired if he had been bowled or run out. In the West Indies in 1953-54, Lock became the first man to be called in a Test match since Ernie Jones. But it was not until 1959, after he saw film of himself bowling against New Zealand that Lock repented, remodelled his action, and extended his career.

So concerned were Sir Donald Bradman, Gubby Allen and other custodians of the game’s welfare that bowlers were soon being spied upon – filmed from behind bushes as the campaign to clean up the game took priority. The small reels held at Lord’s are not all labelled, but respectable bowlers such as Alec Bedser were among those filmed, presumably to establish what was legitimate, something to measure others by. Tom Graveney later wrote: “Throwers weren’t new. They didn’t suddenly appear in 1958, and they didn’t all wear green caps. I had been thrown at for years by a few English county bowlers.”

In the atmosphere of the time, almost everyone who did not have Alec Bedser’s perfect action gave rise to suspicion, even Fred Trueman and Brian Statham. This was cricket’s McCarthyite period. But realisation was now dawning that some bowlers were endowed with what was termed “hyperextension” of the elbow – an ability to drop the extended forearm below the horizontal. The whippy Statham, who took 252 wickets for England, had this abnormality. Harold Rhodes had a similar arm formation, played in only two Tests, was called several times while playing for Derbyshire in the 1960s, and wrote an understandably bitter book.

Ernie Jones was no-balled only twice, which suggests he might have thrown only his extra-fast ball. These occasional throwers are hardest to sort out. England’s Peter Loader was thought by many to throw his bouncer and his slower ball. Similarly with Charlie Griffith. He lumbered to the crease and bowled unexceptional medium-fast – until something almost invisible came down on the batsman. Brian Close later reflected that “you could almost put one hand in your

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pocket and play him… then one would come at you four yards quicker!”

In an age when freedom of speech was in much better health than subsequently, several major batsmen, Ken Barrington and Norm O’Neill among them, aired their anguish over Griffith’s action, and Richie Benaud, recently retired as a player, was not exactly fêted in the Caribbean when he produced incriminating photographs. In the match in which a Griffith bouncer almost killed the Indian captain Nari Contractor at Bridgetown, he was called for throwing, but not until an all-but-unnoticed one-off by Arthur Fagg in the West Indians’ match against Lancashire in 1966 did it happen again.

Once more it was timid officialdom that had blocked potential action by conscientious umpires. Cec Pepper, a formidable Australian cricketer who settled in England and might have become the Jim Phillips of his day, was convinced that Griffith threw but, to his disgust, he was quietly asked by the rulers of the English game to do nothing.

Nowadays the threat of litigation is a concern to anyone discussing this issue. And the risk of losing sizeable professional earnings is a further consideration in persuading umpires that they have to be utterly certain that a bowler is transgressing. From Bobby Peel in the 1890s to a dozen or more whispered names today, the background hum seems always to have been there, often against bowlers who were never officially called at all. In the early 1900s, Australia’s skipper Joe Darling dubbed Jack Saunders “the dirtiest chucker we ever had”, but no umpire ever

confirmed that.Bowlers tend to protest their innocence to the

grave. Aside from Lock, only one exception comes to mind. In 1999 the former West Indies spinner Sonny Ramadhin, in an interview with Peter Johnson in the Daily Mail, confessed that his faster ball was thrown: “Nowadays, the television cameras would have picked it up immediately… But I got away with it in every grade of cricket for 30 years.” Ramadhin, who bowled with sleeves buttoned at the wrist, expressed doubts about Muralitharan’s action, and marvelled that he had taken so many Test wickets.

After decades of muddled attempts to defenestrate erring bowlers, the ICC procedure has seemed to be close to perfection, apart from the clause permitting reported bowlers to continue playing while still undergoing remedial work. The ICC pursue a progressive scientific charter, though the precise effect remains unpredictable, especially with this increased licence for all to flex the bowling arm as much as 15 degrees. Over a century ago, Spofforth surprisingly suggested that bowlers should be allowed to throw, and the matter would soon sort itself out. Perhaps even the Demon himself did not quite know what he meant by that. Maybe we are about to see all manner of dart throwers and baseball pitchers entering the bowling ranks. It does feel as if something precious and fundamental is being torn from the heart of the game.

David Frith is a cricket author and historian. He was editor of The Cricketer from 1972 to 1978 and of Wisden Cricket Monthly from its foundation in 1979 until 1996

J. WillesKent v MCC at Lord’s, 1822For bowling round-arm

E. Joneson two occasions, 1897-98J. Phillips called Jones when bowling for Australia v England at Melbourne, the first instance in Tests

C. B. Fry on four occasions, 1898 and 1900

A. W. Moldon two occasions, 1900 and 1901Phillips called Mold once in 1900 and then 16 times in ten overs a year later

G. H. T. Simpson-HaywardLord Brackley’s XI v Barbados at Bridgetown, 1904-05For taking a shy at the wicket instead of bowling

D. J. InsoleEssex v Northamptonshire at Northampton, 1952“I was cross because Freddie Brown wouldn’t declare, so I ran up and chucked one at him’’

G. A. R. Lockon five separate occasions, 1952 to 1960

G. M. Griffinon eight separate occasions, 1958-59 to 1962-63This includes one instance when he was no-balled 11 times for South Africa v England at Lord’s, 1960

H. J. Rhodeson four separate occasions, 1960 to 1965

I. Meckiffon three separate occasions, 1962-63 to 1963-64He retired after being no-balled in his only over for Australia, v South Africa at Brisbane in 1963-64

S. M. Gavaskar Rest of India v Karnataka at Ahmedabad, 1974-75

G. A. GoochEngland XI v East Zone at Jamshedpur, 1981-82Impersonating J. E. Emburey

D. I. GowerEngland v New Zealand at Nottingham, 1986Deliberate throw with the scores level

C. E. L. AmbroseLeeward Islands v Trinidad at Pointe-à-Pierre, 1987-88

M. MuralitharanSri Lanka v Australia at Melbourne, 1995-96Called seven times by D. B. Hair. He was also called by R. A. Emerson in two one-day internationals

R. W. T. KeyKent v Somerset at Taunton, 2001Impersonating Shoaib Akhtar

Probables and improbables

The following are among the players no-balled for throwing:

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Now Jack Russell really is a one-off. And the thing about Jack is that he always – always – insisted on wearing that ridiculous hat! Every time I saw him it seemed to have another patch somewhere or other. Back in the 1990s, one of my jobs was to take portraits of the England players for Cornhill, the Test sponsors. They would print a couple of hundred postcards for the stars to sign and hand out to fans. No one was allowed to keep their hat on. No one, that is, except Jack. He and his hat just wouldn’t be separated. Maybe like Alan Knott, one of his predecessors behind the stumps, he was superstitious. Jack and I got on well, perhaps because he’s an artist – he paints in oils – and also has an eye for visual detail.

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4“One of the great cricket books... as good as cricket book literature gets”

Cricket Web

� e remarkable tale of one of cricket’s most astonishing achievements

Buy yours at a special Wisden EXTRA discount rate. Click here to buy, use code WE10A at checkout to redeem your 25% discount.

“An amazing story very well told” Richard Hobson,

� e Times

“A must read” David 'Bumble' Lloyd,

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“A little gem” Independent on

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“Warm portrayal of Verity by the excellent Chris Waters” Peter Hayter, Cricket Paper

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I probably couldn’t have taken this one on film. Well, if I had, it would have been horribly grainy, as I’ve cropped in pretty tight – almost certainly the original would have included the batsman in the frame. It’s England v Sri Lanka in 2006, and this is Geraint Jones, another in a long line of talented Kent keepers, who almost seems balanced on his right glove. Jones has caught the ball cleanly enough, but the umpire ruled that Muttiah Muralitharan hadn’t hit the ball, so the batsman survived. In the last couple of years, Jones has turned out for his native Papua New Guinea.

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Where does the chucking crackdown leave English cricket, which has only a peripheral experience of unorthodox actions? Richard Gibson spoke to two men with important roles at Loughborough

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Peter Such, the ECB’s lead spin coach, believes the global curb on suspect bowling actions chimes with the prevailing stance long taken in the English game. Much has been made of England’s inability to produce a spinner capable of bowling the doosra: Maurice Holmes, the most obvious exponent, chose to concentrate on his university studies after being frozen out of the first-class game. But it seems increasingly likely that by the time of the next World Cup in early 2015, most of the leading

practitioners of the doosra will be absent from the feast.The two highest-ranked one-day international

bowlers, Saeed Ajmal and Sunil Narine, are currently removed from national duty and working furiously on their actions. Ajmal is remodelling his in Pakistan – with the guidance of the doosra’s pioneer, Saqlain Mushtaq – after it was found to be illegal in September. Narine is undergoing informal remedial work back home in Trinidad after he was reported and suspended in the

Getting to grips with it Peter Such

on duty at Loughborough.

Matthew Lewis, Getty Images

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Champions League, and withdrawn from international cricket by West Indies as a precaution.

The doosra, its detractors say, is impossible to bowl legally. Such, the former England off-spinner, does not go quite as far as that. “It’s difficult to bowl without getting close to that 15-degree limit of extension, but anything is possible,” he says. “We are all for encouraging unorthodoxy and people having a point of difference, but it has to be within the Laws of the game. What it comes down to is the methodology: if you get chest on in your action early, and are releasing the ball with the back of your hand facing the target, it is very difficult to do so without bending your elbow. Then, as the bowling arm moves through to release, the vast majority of elbows automatically straighten.”

Ten international off-spinners have been reported in top-level cricket in the past 12 months. And that perhaps explains the reluctance of England’s new Test spinner Moeen Ali, who did not deliver a single doosra in taking six Indian wickets in Southampton in July, to sway from the path of orthodoxy despite hours of practising it in the nets. Azeem Rafiq, recently of Yorkshire, also possesses the ability to make the ball leave the right-hander, but found opportunities to do so in 2014 limited by selection.

Not that there has been much of a policy shift from the ECB. “We are not really doing anything differently,” said Such. “What’s happened is that the Law that’s been there for a long time is being applied and it’s being applied rigorously. We are delighted about that because we have always promoted the legality of bowling actions, and looked at putting a moral stamp on it if you like. The integrity of the game is vital. Our attitude has been that there is a Law so let’s play by it.”

Such worked with Holmes – dubbed the “English Murali” in his youth – as far back as 2009-10 to try to keep him on the right side of the Law. But he was reported while playing for Warwickshire in 2011, and after testing was advised by the ECB not to bowl his doosra. The National Performance Centre at Loughborough, where that work took place, is now one of four ICC-accredited testing facilities, along with others in Cardiff, Brisbane and Chennai. Until recently, the international game relied almost exclusively on the team led by Daryl Foster, now 75, the renowned human movement specialist based at the University of Western Australia in Perth, to assess bowling actions. According to a recent investigation by ESPNCricinfo, UWA are believed to have withdrawn their testing services from the ICC back in March – they dispute the efficacy of the

new testing procedures rolled out in their place.“It’s really important for English cricket to be

involved in this,” says Dr Mark King, who heads the facility at Loughborough. “We have got the best facility on the planet at Loughborough, and a long history of doing this sort of analysis, so it was only right that we got accredited and went through the process with this new method.”

In addition to official testing, facilities such as Loughborough can be used for more informal assessments, should concern over a bowler – international or domestic – arise before they are officially reported in a match. One such assessment with an unnamed player has taken place at Loughborough since its upgrade in status in October.

“It’s the right thing for a coach to do. If you are not sure [about a bowler’s legality] then you ask someone who knows a bit more, and I guess in England at the moment that’s me,” says King, who collated the reports on the successful remodelling of Gloucestershire off-spinner Jack Taylor last year. After his nine-month suspension came to an end, Taylor blogged about the daunting nature of bowling in the silent sports hall, monitored by 12 cameras. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” he wrote.

“It can be a difficult situation,” King says. “A player comes in for the test and it’s very stressful for them. You are trying to reassure them you will be doing a very professional job and all you want them to do is bowl. Quite simply, the outcome will be the outcome. There is no subjectivity at all; it’s simply a case of the numbers. We try to make it as relaxed an environment as we possibly can, and they have to make sure they’re bowling in a laboratory environment in the same way as they do in a match situation.”

But what if an individual fails to fully replicate his match action during testing? Quite simply, that test is null and void and another has to take place. King maintains the technology is now at such a level as to virtually rule out any manipulation of the system.

“High-speed video of bowlers from multiple angles shows the speed of a ball delivered in competition,” says King. “You then compare it to footage in the laboratory environment with camera views as close as possible to those that we have got the match footage from. Because you have 30 to 40 pictures of that action over a short period of time it’s quite clear if they’re doing something different.”

Richard Gibson is a freelance journalist

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6When I was a youngster, back in the 1950s, my father would often take me to the Tests. England’s regular keeper was Godfrey Evans, and from what I recall he was pretty tidy behind the stumps. He was handy with a bat too, and made a couple of Test hundreds in the days when a keeper could go in at No. 9, make 15, and get a pat on the back. He was clean-shaven then, I think – I never had the chance to photograph him as a player – but in retirement he grew these amazing mutton-chop whiskers. This image was taken at Trent Bridge in 1984 when he was a consultant to Ladbrokes, the bookmakers. At Headingley three years earlier, with England 135 for seven in the follow-on, and still 92 from making Australia bat again, Evans had famously given odds of 500-1 against a home victory. Few would have disagreed…

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GRIFFIN, GEOFFREY MERTON, collapsed and died while speaking at a dinner at his old school, Durban High, on November 16, 2006, aged 67. A central character in the “chucking” controversy that gripped cricket nearly half a century ago, Geoff Griffin made two indelible marks on Test history. During the Second Test of the 1960 tour of England, he took the first (and so far only) Test hat-trick at Lord’s, and for South Africa anywhere. Far less happily, he also became the first bowler to be no-balled for throwing in a Test there.

Griffin’s problems stemmed from an accident at school – where he had been an outstanding all-round athlete, holding Natal titles in all four jumping events – which had left him unable to straighten his right arm fully. This, allied to an open-chested action, with front foot splayed towards gully, made him look more like a baseball pitcher than a conventional bowler. His methods were ungainly but effective: he booked his tour place by topping the South African averages in 1959-60, with 35 wickets at 12.22, including a career-best seven for 11 in the second innings of the freak match when Natal bowled out Border for 16 and 18. Griffin, only 20 when the tour started, was unfortunate in the sense that his arrival coincided with one of cricket’s periodic frenzies about suspect actions, sparked off by the 1958-59 Ashes. Some in South Africa claimed he had been singled out in an attempt to clean up the game before Australia came to England in 1961. (If so, it worked: none of Australia’s alleged chuckers was picked.)

But Griffin’s action was considered suspect even at school, and he was called in two domestic matches in 1958-59. The South African commentator Charles Fortune had no doubt that his bowling was illegal: “The South African authorities who sent Griffin to England chanced their arm,” he wrote. John Waite, the wicketkeeper throughout the drama, felt the same: “Before that tour I’d played for Transvaal against Natal, and because I got cramp I had a runner. So I was standing at square leg when Griffin bowled. I said to the umpire, ‘This chap is throwing,’ and he said: ‘You concentrate on batting, and leave the umpiring to me.’” Waite also recalled Ted Dexter’s anger when he was bowled by Griffin in the MCC match at Lord’s early in the 1960 tour: “He threw his bat down and grumbled that he’d been thrown out.” Both umpires, Frank Lee and John Langridge, called him that day, and there were further incidents against Nottinghamshire, after which Griffin was sent to Alf Gover’s indoor school for remedial treatment. When he returned, some thought his arm was a little straighter – but his direction certainly was not, and he had a notably wild spell during the Edgbaston Test, which he got through without problems from the umpires.

In the lead-up to Lord’s, he apparently reverted to his old style in a bid to regain his rhythm: he was called again at Southampton, yet was named in the Test team. At Lord’s, Peter Walker, who put on 120 with Mike

The stories surrounding bowlers who have been called for a suspect action are rarely happy. This is the obituary of a South African who suffered more than most

Geoff Griffin 1939–2006

From the Archive Wisden 2007

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Smith, was unequivocal: “There was absolutely no doubt in either Mike’s or my mind that he threw virtually every ball.” Frank Lee seemed in little doubt either. He no-balled Griffin 11 times but let go the deliveries that dismissed Smith for 99, and then Walker and Fred Trueman to the first two balls of his next over. Griffin’s trauma was not over, though. England won the Test by an innings early on the fourth day and, with the Queen due to visit later on, the South Africans were persuaded to play an exhibition game to entertain the crowd. The “entertainment” that ensued was grim stuff: Griffin came on to bowl, this time with the fearless Syd Buller at square leg. Buller no-balled four of Griffin’s first six deliveries, whereupon, in desperation, he tried bowling underarm, only to be called again by Lee, at the bowler’s end, for failing to inform the batsman of the change of

delivery mode – a heavy-handed act in a match of no consequence.

Griffin’s international career was over: he did not bowl again on the tour, playing against the counties as a specialist No. 8 or 9 batsman. He attempted a comeback for Rhodesia, but another bout of no-balling finished his career for good. In retirement he did some coaching, and ran a couple of hotels. Still that right elbow troubled him: he once challenged some of his hotel guests to arm-wrestle, only for his first opponent to break his arm. South Africans talk, without exception, about his cheerful disposition and kindness. “He had no malice at all,” said a Durban High School contemporary, Esmond Caro. “He accepted his no-balling and bore no resentment. When he ran the hotels, if anyone wanted a job, he would always find room for them.”

Public humiliation: Frank Lee and Syd Buller, at square leg, look on as Geoff Griffin is forced to bowl underarm at Lord’s in 1960.

PA Photos

I have to confess we’ve had this pic in Eagar’s Eye before, but I couldn’t really have a selection of great keepers without including Adam Gilchrist’s amazing feat of acrobatics. The unlucky batsman is Michael Vaughan, and the beneficiary is the indefatigable Glenn McGrath. This was the last Ashes Test of that amazing 2005 summer, and the tension at The Oval was becoming unbearable. England led by just six on first innings, and were threatening to wobble – at least until someone called Pietersen walloped 158. I’ve just looked at the shutter speed for this, and I see it’s 1/1,000th of a second, which was fast by the standards of a decade ago, and quite impossible a decade before that. Now, though, it’s not unusual for a sports photographer to take an image at 1/5,000th of a second – and that really does freeze the action!

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It’s funny how your mind works. This 1972 photograph is well over 40 years old, but because it was taken in my first season as a full-time cricket photographer, it’s fresher than anything I snapped last week. The red ball in the upraised red glove is the focus in a sea of green, and only later do you take in the fielders’ expressions. The keeper is of course Alan Knott, and it’s taken during the Headingley Ashes Test, when Derek Underwood ran through the Australians on a helpful pitch. His victim here is the left-handed Australian stumper, Rod Marsh. England were blessed with two fine keepers in those days, and Knott had to be pretty special to keep out Bob Taylor. Not that they were equals as a batsman: Knott hit five Test hundreds and 30 fifties, while Taylor reached 50 only three times. That’s Keith Fletcher at short leg, and Peter Parfitt at slip.

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“They’re called Tests because they test the players,” my father explained.

“But what are they tests for?” went my puzzled reply.It’s tempting to read into my question precocious

concern about the global structure and scheduling of the five-day game, before the ICC introduced team rankings, let alone designed, then ditched the World Test Championship. Clearly my eight-year-old self intuitively appreciated the difficulties of placing Test cricket into a modern sporting framework.

My question was more pedantic than shrewd. Why Tests? What are they testing? Why do the players subject themselves to this testing? If Tests only exist as an end in themselves, are they merely some type of quasi-Descartian expression – “I Test, therefore I Test?” Or pseudo-Biblical – “I Test that I Test?”

By the time I witnessed my first Test in the flesh, such metaphysical niceties had vanished. My teenage years were in full spate, bringing with them the common experiences of slogging through exams and noticing girls (preferably not at the same time). Lord’s wasn’t the best place for either of those activities, which might explain why I recall virtually none of the play.

I even misremembered which Test it was. According to my ticket stub, it was England’s First against New Zealand in 2004. To date, it’s the only day one of a Test match, and indeed Test series, that I’ve attended. It should be engraved on my mental honours board.

Michael Vaughan handed a young buck called Andrew Strauss his debut cap. I don’t remember. Mark Richardson anchored New Zealand with 93. No recollection at all. Nathan Astle and Jacob Oram scored fifties at near-100 strike rates. I suspect that by then we might shamefully have crept off to look round the Lord’s Museum.

I’d love to wax Cardus-like over the sense of occasion, the history oozing out of the buildings, the dreamlike excitement of player-proximity. Unfortunately, the silly rather than the serious has stuck, with the only moment really standing out being when Ashley Giles came on to bowl, only for the big screen to display Marcus Trescothick’s mugshot. In the words of Monty Python, there was much rejoicing.

It’s strange, because from the second day onwards – in other words as soon as I left – I remember the Test well. Strauss came within a coat of varnish of scoring twin debut tons on his home ground. Nasser Hussain ran Strauss out, then hit the winning runs, and was promptly taken up in a windstorm to the heavens, that is to say the Sky Sports commentary box. His protégé Vaughan took up the mantle, presiding over a golden age for English cricket. Yet it’s the television coverage I remember of that game, not my presence.

Arguably it suffered from not being my first sight of international players. The previous year I’d ventured to Shenley to see the touring South Africans take on a PCA Masters XI. I’m not sure which was more unpleasant: the scorching heat, or the inane music reminding us of every boundary – as if we hadn’t come to actually watch the cricket. Perhaps that explains my strong preference for Tests over one-day internationals. Fortunately, we not only saw magnificent Muralitharan boundary catching, we were also treated, after my father offered some local supermarket knowledge, to the mildly surreal sight of the South Africans, in team kit, drifting up and down the aisles in a suburban Sainsbury’s. Checking out Kallis at the checkout won’t be quickly forgotten.

Nor was 2004 my first encounter with Lord’s. I’d attended with my father a Minor Counties final in 1997, a dreary 55-over plod that ran into the reserve day. It started with us repeatedly ringing the Lord’s Prospects

Visiting teams have often struggled with the tricky conditions of a May Test. In 2004 Liam Cromar was at Lord’s to see how New Zealand fared – at least he might have been…

Was that Banger or the King of Spain?

My First Test

Scorecard: click here

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of Play hotline (hot not being the right adjective) from the platform at Baker Street tube station, which was about as thrilling as it got. Largely memorable for a group of Shropshire stalwarts hoarsely goading their Norfolk counterparts, the spectator experience left much to be desired, especially when the ice-cream van chose to close up when the sun finally came out. I didn’t return to NW8 for seven years.

What’s past is prologue, and so perhaps the Test’s personal impact should be judged not by what I can remember but by its fruitage. The New Zealand Test must have subconsciously stirred something, for now I struggle to recall when the features of Lord’s were in any way alien. If home is where the heart is, I should get a mortgage in the Edrich Stand Upper – weathered red edifice ahead, blessed green incline below.

I now never forget how modest the ground’s real-life dimensions are, as opposed to the wide-angled exaggeration seen on television. Similarly, the mood of the crowd is something only properly gauged at the Test – all the Ponting-baiting, anti-selector-grumbling, and raucous Swann-cheering is never quite transmitted, although TMS make a valiant stab. It’s also the case that a Test match is the premier arena to hear the best, most

amusing nonsense spouted about the Laws.Clearly there was something addictive in the air (not

merely the surreptitious cigarette smoke produced by our neighbours), since within a year, I was back to see Bangladesh getting slaughtered. An Ashes Test soon made the list. The dependency has grown to the stage where I plan, circumstances permitting, to attend each England home Test in 2015. Upon familiarity has grown anything but contempt.

I feel mildly encouraged by all of this. It seems one’s first Test need not be memorable in itself, and yet still silently, unconsciously, capture one’s spirit. Twenty years on, when revisiting the question “what are Tests for?”, I now see the truth of my father’s simple reply. Tests do possess a sort of internal self-justification, in that they will be cherished as long as both players and spectators desire to test themselves, and each other. Some may not realise until years later that they passed the test. I think it’s one worth taking.

Liam Cromar is a web designer, and won Wisden’s writing competition in 2014. For details about the 2015 competition, click here. Entries must be received by November 30, 2014

For aficionados of the wicketkeeping art, Lord’s staged a remarkable Test in 1986. It was against New Zealand and, on the second day, Bruce French, the England keeper, was clonked on the head by Richard Hadlee and forced to retire hurt. When England took the field, French was still groggy, and the call went out for a replacement. It happened that Bob Taylor, who had played the last of his 57 Tests a couple of years before, was on the ground, working for the sponsors, Cornhill. By chance or habit, Taylor even had his gloves in the car, and so, while he fetched them, Bill Athey kept for a couple of overs. Roland Butcher, who must have been the sub fielder, is wearing a Middlesex cap, while Neil Foster hands Taylor his inners. Later in the game, French briefly kept wicket, before a fourth gloveman, Hampshire’s Bobby Parks, took over. I seem to recall that Taylor, who had just turned 45, kept as well as anyone.

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Keeping to a young Shane Warne, when every ball fizzed in the air and spat off the surface, must have been a challenge and a half, but that’s what Ian Healy had to do, day in, day out. I took this one with a remote control looking straight down the Trent Bridge pitch in 1997, and it’s come out OK. It could be better, though: you had to set up a remote camera with a preset focus, and naturally you chose to have the batsman, rather than the keeper, as sharp as possible. It’s an unusual angle for a photograph and, given that Healy is facing away from the batsman, an unusual subject. It’s easy to identify umpire Shep, and I’m fairly sure the non-striker is John Crawley, with Mark Taylor fielding at slip.

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QUIZAnswers on page 31

Why was India’s Abid Ali called for throwing in a Test against New Zealand in 1967-68?

Which England player (a very occasional bowler) gifted New Zealand victory at Trent Bridge in 1986 by deliberately throwing the final ball of the match?

What was unusual about umpire Darrell Hair’s no-balling of Muttiah Muralitharan in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne in 1995-96?

What is the maximum elbow-flexion currently allowed by the ICC?

Which bowler, who once reputedly whistled a ball through WG Grace’s beard, was in 1897-98 the first to be called for throwing in a Test match?

Which Zimbabwean fast bowler was no-balled for throwing on his Test debut in 1994-95?

And which Zimbabwean spinner was no-balled for throwing by Darrell Hair in a Test in 2000?

The West Indian Test batsman Derek Sealy felt he was particularly unlucky when he was out while playing for Barbados against Trinidad in 1942. Why?

Called for throwing in a domestic match in 1872-73, he captained Australia in the inaugural Test match four years later. Who was he?

Which off-spinner, who uniquely scored a century and took a hat-trick in the same Test in October 2013, is currently banned from bowling in international cricket while he undergoes remedial work on his action?

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by Steven Lynch

WINNER of the British Sports Awards Cricket Book of the Year

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10 for 10: Hedley Verity and the story of cricket’s greatest bowling feat, by Chris Waters, won the prestigious Cricket Writers’ Club Book of the Year at the club’s end-of-season lunch. The cricket journalist, historian and radio producer David Rayvern Allen, who died in October aged 76, was on the judging panel.

A bench inspired by Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack (pictured right) sold for £4,000 to an anonymous buyer at a Southbank Centre auction in October. It was designed by the artist and architect Trevor Skempton, and positioned outside the City of London Guildhall for ten weeks during the summer, as part of the City Trail collection of benches inspired by literary figures.

All seven past winners of the Wisden Schools Cricketer of the Year award appeared in first-

Our sponsors Hardys – the official wine of English cricket – are giving away two cases of their excellent wares. First prize is a full case; two runners-up will each receive six bottles.

To enter, all you need to do is answer this question – who took 12 wickets in India’s maiden Test victory over England? – click here to enter.

class cricket in 2014. The 2012 winner from Taunton School, Tom Abell, top-scored with 95 on first-class debut for Somerset in their home defeat by Warwickshire. The latest recipient, Tom Köhler-

NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS Cadmore, a record-breaking run-scorer at Malvern College, struck four Championship fifties for Worcestershire, including 99 against Leicestershire, and a century against Cambridge MCCU. The first three winners, Jonny Bairstow, James Taylor and Jos Buttler, are all now England Test players.

Manchester were emphatic winners of the final of the 2014 Lord’s Taverners City Cup – formerly the Wisden City Cup – at Aston Manor CC, Birmingham, in September, beating North London by seven wickets. Manchester’s opening bowler Ejaz Din, who plays his club cricket for Whalley Range, and left-arm spinner Ali Sartaj, with Lancashire League side Rishton, attended trials for MCC Young Cricketers at Lord’s. North London leg-spinner Tahir Kazmi (Aston Rowant) and Leicester batsman Priyank Patel (Hinckley Town) were the other

Win a case of Hardys Wine!

National Literacy Trust

The winners will be announced in the first Wisden EXTRA issue of 2015, out February 13th. All entrants must be 18 or over, resident in the UK, and comply with our terms and conditions.

Closing date for entries is February 2nd, 2015. The decision of the editorial team is final.

WisdenEXTRA • Chucking special 31

NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS

QUIZ ANSWERS See page 29

1 He threw a ball deliberately in protest against the action of the New Zealand fast bowler Gary Bartlett, who hadn’t been called.

2 David Gower. 3 Hair was standing at the bowler’s end, not at

square leg. 4 15 degrees. 5 Ernie Jones (Australia).

6 Henry Olonga. 7 Grant Flower. 8 Sealy was facing an off-spinner called Syed Mobarak

Ali, who was being repeatedly called for throwing during the innings – and switched to bowling leg-spin. Expecting another no-ball, Sealy hit out and was caught... but the umpire hadn’t called this one.

9 Dave Gregory. 10 Sohag Gazi (Bangladesh).

two City Cup players selected for the trials. Three City Cup graduates excelled in 2014: Palash Joshi was the YCs’ leading wicket-taker in the Second XI Championship; Zain Shahzad took 11 wickets against first-class counties for Cambridge MCCU; and left-arm spinner Imran Qayyum won a contract with Kent. The City Cup was set up by the former Wisden editor Scyld Berry and Middlesex coach Phil Knappett in 2009, to try to address the underrepresentation of inner-city and ethnic minority cricketers in the English professional game. A Twenty20 tournamentis played in eight different towns and cities, with the best players selected for the representative side in a national knockout.

Shikhar Dhawan (pictured below), the India opening batsman named one of Wisden’s Five

Cricketers of the Year for 2014, was presented with his special leatherbound Almanack by Mike Gatting, the MCC president, during last summer’s Test series. Gatting, the former Middlesex and England captain, was a Cricketer of the Year in 1984.

Nottinghamshire became the fourth county – after Yorkshire, Middlesex and Surrey – to erect an honours board marking their past Wisden Cricketers of the Year (pictured above). Four of those in the pantheon, Chris Read (2011), Franklyn Stephenson(1989), Tim Robinson (1986) and Derek Randall (1980) were on hand to unveil the board in the Trent Bridge pavilion during the Royal London One-Day Cup fixture against Surrey in August. Of the 18 counties, only Surrey (49), Yorkshire (44) and Lancashire (34)

have had more Cricketers of the Year than Nottinghamshire. For a full list of Cricketers of the Year, click here.

Wisden, a two-year-old horse in Sir Michael Stoute’s Newmarket stable, suffered a recent injury setback. A bone scan in September revealed a hairline fracture in his right tibia – a fairly common injury among colts of his age, and one that should heal quickly. However, it means that he will not race before the end of the year. Vets suggest box rest for Wisden until he returns to fitness.

Wisden 2015 will include a supplementary obituary section for those whose deaths have been overlooked. Many readers helped with information about possible candidates, and we greatly appreciate your help.

Clare Skinner

Christopher Lane