Paul Lewis: Murali, Murali life is but a dream

In the fairy garden wonderland of the International Cricket Council (ICC), a horrid new evil has arrived to defecate on the daisies. His name is Johan Botha and, horror of horrors, he bowls with a - gasp - crooked arm.

Yet, just across the shimmering waters of the mighty Tasman, Muttiah Muralitharan continued to bowl on with... you guessed it... a crooked arm.

One is an off-spinner with a dodgy action and a doosra (an off-spinner which leaves the batsman but is delivered with an off-spin action). The other is an off-spinner with a dodgy action and a doosra.

Botha is doing exactly what Murali is but he became the first South African player to be reported in a test match for throwing when his action was deemed suspicious by match referee Chris Broad in the final test against Australia.

Throwing, or bowling with a bent arm, allows the bowler to impart a great deal more action on the ball and many judges, including the former Pakistani master spinner Mushtaq Mohammed and New Zealand's Daniel Vettori, maintain that a doosra cannot be bowled unless with an illegal action.

Meanwhile, Murali bowled unchallenged in the recent tour of New Zealand by Sri Lanka. It was the ICC who rubber-stamped the proposal to extend the degree of bend that cricket's bowlers can have in their arm when delivering a ball. Sounds innocent enough, until you discover that the new angle of bend in a spin bowler's arm is 15 degrees. This lets Muralitharan (who has a 14-degree bend) out of the bounds of being a chucker and into the emerald garden of the ICC's special fairyland, where he is embraced by shiny, happy ICC members wearing white robes and humming odes of joy.

The ICC, in reshaping chucking, chose to rewrite the laws of the game instead of just calling Murali what he is and rewriting the record books. Writing Murali out of the game would have enraged the Sri Lankans and possibly even led to court action. Instead, it was more convenient to rewrite the laws, changing the very shape of the game. It also meant that crowd-pulling players, like Murali, are free to ply their trade and earn more dollars for the ICC.

Until this business with Botha, they might have got away with it because - let's face it - the sun still rose and shone and the world kept turning.

But, watching Murali bowl to the Black Caps, I found myself squirming uncomfortably. It didn't look right. His doosra was particularly bent. I've seen straighter arms on beer drinkers. This isn't cricket, it's darts.

His treatment in Australia will be interesting.

But what do I know? I'm only using the naked eye. As was Broad. And, presumably, the match officials who watched Murali bowl in New Zealand.

The ICC's announcement that some of the world's most revered bowlers - Lillee, McGrath and others - had all been guilty of chucking on occasion came from biomechanic study of footage that they claimed caught imperfections in the actions of such bowlers.

Sorry, but this is unmitigated twaddle. You can apply science until the neutrons burst out your ears but the fact remains - the ICC are pulling a swifty.

For over 160 years, bowlers have stuck to bowling with a straight arm. That's what cricket is. That's what separates it from baseball. And darts.

What about bowlers through cricket's history who have been called for chucking and who have had their careers affected or even afflicted? Like the West Indies' Charlie Griffiths, perhaps the most controversial example.

Or, to turn the logic around, how many wickets would great spinners like Bishen Bedi, Erapali Prasanna, Mushtaq and many others have taken if they had been allowed to bend the arm and give the ball a big old 14-degree flick?

Even the often-trotted-out line that Murali is simply making the best of a biological misfortune with an arm disfigured at birth is taking the mickey. India spinner BS Chandrasekar played against New Zealand in the 60s and 70s with an arm withered by polio. Didn't seem to stop him turning the ball four feet and taking lots of Kiwi wickets - with a straight arm.

Broad simply called Botha for what he thought was a chuck. Good on him. But, when it comes to Murali, ICC eyes appear to be averted.

Farcical? Yup. Nonsensical? Oh yes. Consider the latest. The South Africans, in waiting for Botha's action to be tested by the ICC are seeking help - from Murali.

Botha's action is modelled on Indian spinner Harbajhan Singh rather than Murali. The ICC found that Singh, himself called for chucking by Broad previously, did not throw when being analysed but appeared to when playing. Cue hysterical laughter.

Then cue the comments of former Australian umpire Ross Emerson, a renowned opponent of Murali. In 2002 Emerson said that Murali's action would stimulate a whole "new generation of chuckers".

Seems pretty prescient now, doesn't it? But let's leave the last word with Bedi, a masterful left-arm spinner whose subtlety as a bowler contrasts with a blunt nature off the field. He has already called Murali and Pakistan's Shoaib Akhtar "javelin throwers" and, writing in India in an article picked up by the International Herald Tribune, Bedi said: "I agree with Jeff Thomson when he says the ICC are a bunch of bullshitters, an absolute waste of space. On that count, let's resolve to chuck out all the chuckers from world cricket in 2006."

Hear, hear.