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cricket
cricket Bend it like Ajmal! Offspinner Saeed Ajmal’s success against the English batting line has reignited the debate on the extent of arm-bend that should be considered legal. By Umair A Qazi Saeed Ajmal
may not be a youngster or a find which may serve Pakistan successfully
for the next decade or so, but he is certainly a Godsend amidst the
crisis that has overshadowed Pakistan cricket for the last one and a
half years. Ajmal isn’t the
first Pakistani spinner to have mastered the art of the ‘doosra’ but
is certainly one of those who have mastered it and used it to decimate
sides all over the world, England being his latest casualty. Ajmal has done rather
well by delivering the doosra with an action quite different from that
of Saqlain as well as by producing other variations. Ajmal has made not
only us Pakistanis proud but the game of cricket as well. He has
convinced everybody that the art of spin bowling is still one of the
most cherished acts in Test cricket. On the first day of
the first Test against England, when Ajmal completely bamboozled the
English batsmen, doubts on Ajmal’s action were expressed by none other
than the English commentators and critics, who are given to their cry
baby approach to problems or questions they don’t seem to have an
answer for. A bare perusal through
history shows that the English have traditionally been to some extent
jealous of the talents bowlers from Pakistan have possessed. One such example is
that of reverse swing, which Wasim and Waqar used to rout English line
ups in the 1992 tour when the English failed to comprehend their
bowling. They changed their
opinion only after one of their own bowlers, Flintoff, used reverse
swing to help them regain the Ashes after many struggling years. It was
then that they accepted the legality of the art which they had
questioned and called illegal and outside the parameters of the laws
governing the game. For years Imran, Wasim
and Waqar spoke about the importance of maintaining the ball, keeping
the shine on one side, ensuring that the team as a whole takes care in
handling the ball in order for the reverse swing to occur. But all such
speeches fell on deaf ears when it came to the English and their
inability to reverse swing. Questioning Ajmal’s
action and whether he bends his arms within the parameters of the law is
completely unwarranted. The English have
generally not been known to produce match winning spinners or even ones
who could threaten the opposition. John Emburey may be
remembered as a spinner who served England well but never was he thought
of as a match winner or someone who could get sides out singlehandedly.
The likes of Phil Tufnell and Robert Croft impressed for a while,
but were soon exposed and were not able to keep a permanent place in the
side. Perhaps Ian Salisbury
best sums up England’s woes as far as fielding a world class spinner
is concerned. English
spinners have always been known to adopt a one channel line preferably
outside the off stump and to bring it in as an off spinner and vice
versa and wait for the batsmen to make a mistake rather than relying on
skill or variation to make something happen. Ashley Giles, member
of the triumphant English Ashes squad under Micheal Vaughan, was also at
best a container and occasionally relied on the rough to help get some
turn. Now that the Asians
have started emerging in every field across the United Kingdom, it is
expected that they will finally learn the techniques such as the doosra.
Their spin bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed can help them a lot in this
respect. Graeme Swann is no
less than a Godsend for the English who after many years in the
wilderness has finally been recognised as a world class spinner.
If we were for a minute to give heed to the suggestion that
Ajmal’s arm bends more than the permitted degree under the law, the
question remains why the English discovered it only after he demolished
their batting line up. The ICC allows a 15
degree bend, a law which was amended after the unique cases of Shoaib
Akhtar and Muralitharan. The original law allowed an eleven degree bend.
What the ICC needs to
consider is the amount of breach that can be considered negligible.
Perhaps a 17 degree bend every now and then can be ignored. However,
anything above an eighteen degree bend should alert the authorities and
they should call for review. But this can only be done if there are
consistent checks employed by the ICC every six months or so making it
mandatory for players to get their actions scrutinized once a year. As stated earlier, a
small degree of bend should be ignored or then exciting bowlers like
Malinga ought to be questioned as well for surely they ought to
sometimes go over the 15 degree mark. Scrutinizing every ball has never
been a feasible option. Let us for once
rejoice having the best spinner in the world after all that we have been
through. The writer is a
practicing Barrister umairkazi@gmail.com
Of
mental toughness All sports are
different in that they have different sets of rules and scoring
methodology, but they are similar in the fact that all require mental
toughness. The common thread that runs between all forms of sporting
competitions is the toll they take on the participants’ nerves. The two latest
examples of this similarity between two very different sports were the
Australian Open men’s singles semifinal between Roger Federer and
Rafael Nadal and the quarter final of the Copa Del Rey in Spain between
Real Madrid and Barcelona. Federer went into the
match looking as good on the court as he ever has: the flowing forehand,
deft drop shots and commanding cross court backhand. Up against him was
a player many labelled a usurper when he began his assault on
Federer’s throne at the top of the tennis world. Nadal has struggled in
Melbourne in the past few years, being let down by his increasingly
burdened physique. Nadal held a 7-2 lead over Federer in Grand Slam
matches going into this one, and as if some further background was
needed, we had Nadal’s comments before the competition where he all
but said that Federer was blessed with a physique and style of play that
was not so physically demanding as that of his and Djokovic’s, so they
would end their playing careers with their bodies having undergone a lot
of punishment, while Federer would ‘finish as a rose’. The match started with
Federer sending down a few beautiful backhand and forehand winners to
break serve and take the lead. The Swiss took the first set with Nadal
only showing glimpses of his core competence, with the trademark
forehands from deep in the court showcasing the Spaniard’s upper body
strength. Despite his dominance, one could not shake the feeling that
Federer’s surge will not last. This was proven when Nadal broke back
in the first set in a game where Federer hit two unforced errors off his
forehand and scuffed a volley. While he did manage to take the set in
the tie break, the weathervane of his game, the forehand, was starting
to turn in his opponent’s favour. From the second set,
Nadal began to impose himself on the match, and systematically, the rose
that is Federer began to wilt in the face of the torrid storm whipped up
by Nadal’s prowess in covering the court and his top spin-laden ground
strokes. For all his efforts in the ensuing three sets, the result had
an air of inevitability around it, and Nadal did not slip up to allow
his adversary back in. The Spaniard extended
his lead to 8 wins out of 10 in Grand Slam matches, and while Federer
may finish as a rose, it will be as one tainted with not being able to
overturn the odds against the player chiefly responsible for the
consistent decline in Federer’s winning ways. A good distance away,
back in Nadal’s homeland, the two titans of Spanish football were
going head to head to decide if Real Madrid would be allowed by
Barcelona to retain the only title that the capital club were able to
wrest from the untiring grasp of the Catalans. Defeat in the first
leg, where Real played poorly in front of their own fans, had led to
jeering directed towards Mourinho, with the purists among the Bernabeu
faithful vociferously decrying the departure from flamboyance to the
more practical style of play preferred by the Portuguese manager. Given the history of
results between Barcelona and Real Madrid in recent years, the Catalans
were doing a good job of convincing the world that Real’s win in the
Cope del Rey final of last year was an exception and not the new rule. The tie may have been
only a quarter final, but any face off between these two giants of the
game counts as a special occasion in itself, and the momentousness of
this particular occasion got on the nerves of the Real players as early
as the eleventh second, when Higuain sent a shot shockingly wide after a
defensive mixup in the Barcelona ranks. Ronaldo also sent a shot
straight at Barcelona’s second choice goalkeeper, while Ozil’s
beautiful effort which crashed into the bar from so far out and hit with
such venom, could retrospectively serve only as a microcosm of how these
matches seem as much ordained by fate as the efforts put in by the
players. Barcelona opened the
scoring courtesy of a run by Messi, and they followed this up with
another of those goals that nobody could have predicted, let alone
stopped. Alves’s shot truly affirmed that lady luck had a preference
for Barcelona, and Ramos’s disallowed header only drove the point home
more cruelly. Real Madrid, to their
credit, fought back in the second half and made a match of it, but this
scribe could not shake the feeling, ever so pervasive since Higuain’s
poor effort eleven seconds after kick off, that this night would belong
to Barcelona. That said, Real will
return to Madrid safe in the knowledge that they did not give up in the
face of a famously partisan crowd and the gods of fate themselves. The league is Real’s
to lose, and that is where the true winner of this season will be
decided, as far as Real and Mourinho are concerned. zainhq@gmail.com |
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