Sport | Cricket

Arm sensors to monitor bowling action

The pink cricket ball experiment went without obvious hitch at Lord's on Monday, but it is the proscription of chuckers and superbats that the MCC are really out to nail with the research and development programme they are undertaking with Imperial College, London.

  • By Derek Pringle, Telegraph Group
  • Published: 00:17 April 23, 2008
  • Gulf News

The pink cricket ball experiment went without obvious hitch at Lord's on Monday, but it is the proscription of chuckers and superbats that the MCC are really out to nail with the research and development programme they are undertaking with Imperial College, London.

Chucking is arguably the most emotive issue in cricket and one many feel has not been properly addressed by the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Instead of supporting umpires who wanted to uphold the old law by calling no-ball against bowlers they suspected of bending their elbows beyond acceptable limits (as Darrell Hair once did with Muttiah Muralitharan), the ICC simply increased the angle of tolerance to 15 degrees.

Through their work with Imperial College, MCC are hoping to produce a technology that can be worn by bowlers in matches without impinging on their action.

John Stephenson, MCC's head of cricket and Monday's captain in the pink ball trial against Scotland, is hoping that enough data can be collected in time for the general rewrite of the Laws in three years' time.

"Instead of banning suspected bowlers or sending them away for remedial action, they put these sensors on and play," said Stephenson at Lord's. "Then we come back to the true definition of the law which allows umpires to call bowlers."

While that technology is some way from being perfected, and accepted, Law 6, which defines the bat, has already been redrafted.

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