Dubai: Anil Kumble, one of the most successful bowlers of all time and now a key figure in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) clampdown on suspected chuckers, insists there is no witch-hunt to ban successful bowlers.
The former India captain claimed 619 Test victims with his leg-spin between 1990 and 2008, putting him third on the list of highest wicket-takers behind only Shane Warne (708) and Muttiah Muralitharan (800).
The 44-year-old is now chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee that has, in recent months, targeted players suspected of breaking the law that says the bowling arm can straighten by an angle of no more than 15 degrees during delivery. This has seen several stars — including Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal and Sri Lanka’s Sachitra Senanayake — banned and led to criticism of the game’s global governing body.
But Kumble on Wednesday said: “I read in a couple of reports that we are looking to target people. There is nothing about anyone targeting someone. It is just a process that is being done.”
The former spinner said he has experience of being suspected of having an illegal bowling action from when he was a teenager — and that was what caused him to give up pace bowling and become a spinner.
“I started as a fast bowler at age 13 and I was told to stop by my senior colleagues because they felt that I was bending my arm as a fast bowler,” he said.
“During those days there was neither television nor video, so when my seniors said I should not be bowling that way, I stopped. That bowling action had come naturally to me because, as a young kid, you don’t have the strength to bowl 22 yards.
“Immediately I changed to bowling leg-spin. It is not that I wanted to bowl leg-spin from day one. I was always a fast bowler and that is probably the reason why I bowled quick even as a leg-spinner.”
With off-spinner Ajmal being banned, some critics took that as an attack on his famed doosra delivery and another reason why the modern game favours batsmen over bowlers, but Kumble denied that.
“It is not a question of bowling the doosra. Nobody has said bowling the doosra is illegal — it is the action we are concerned about,” he said. “In my view, bowling the doosra is not at all illegal.
“Also there is no issue of bowlers versus batsmen here. I am a bowler and I am the chairman of the cricket committee. We certainly have taken an overall cricketing view and addressed it.
“As a bowler you are constantly looking to innovate. In today’s cricket, you need to innovate to meet the new challenges because every day it is tough for a bowler to not just get wickets but even survive. It is a constant battle and it is all about how you develop your basic action right from a young age going forward.
“We need to look at the younger lot, because once you have a kink in the arm for various reasons it is very difficult to correct it as you go along. So we want to ensure that people with good, clean actions are coming through from the bottom of the pyramid and hence it is important that it gets addressed.”
On whether or not the 15 degree rule should be changed, Kumble added: “This is all about what is clean and what is not. I don’t think it has anything to do with the changing of any rules or discussions on that.
“The question is how long will it take for those people to come back into professional cricket. I am really positive that people who have been reported will make those necessary corrections and will be back. It is just a matter of time before you see them back in action. Once that happens I don’t think they will even discuss anything to do with the angles.”
