Friday, May 24, 2002 Another week, another Asian cricketer is reported to the ICC because of a suspect action. In Ruchira Perera's case it was clear from watching televised coverage that the umpires and match referee were perfectly justified in asking him to seek advice. International cricket has rules and they should be applied without fear of hurting national pride — but they have to be applied even-handedly.

For his part, Perera did much to enliven a dull game at Lord's. He bowled with zip, and his aggressive approach unsettled England's batsmen on a docile pitch. Nice teams win fewer games than they should, and Sri Lanka need more players with Perera's approach.

Perera is a raw cricketer, as his action and his habit of running down the wicket clearly showed. And it is not especially surprising that his action has not been questioned before. "How did he get so far without being no-balled?" asked many a wise pundit at Lord's. But it is not much of a surprise that he has. Perera has played few games before reaching international level, and what today's cameras can pick up is several shutter speeds ahead of the human eye.

Still that does not mean that Perera is a chucker. Even what the human eye sees on a television monitor can be an illusion — ask David Blaine, the illusionist determined to upstage Houdini. What seemed clear-cut for Muttiah Muralitharan and Shoaib Akhtar on television cameras became far more complex and unclear once the University of Western Australia aimed its high-speed cameras at their bowling arms. So we should be cautious about labelling Perera's action as illegal until it has been further scrutinised.

This is where ICC's process is a farce. In 2000, it replaced a poor system with a worse one, in the spirit of change being better for the sake of it. The central problem is that once a player's action is under suspicion, he can be cleared twice by his own board before the ICC is allowed to make a pronouncement on its validity. Why should this thundercloud of suspicion hang over a player's career? How honest is a system that can be exploited by a cricket board to its own advantage? And why is it that a player can provide high-tech information in his defence but the ICC can theoretically dismiss his case and rely on the jaundiced eyes of its bowling experts?

There is a better way, if ICC dared to adopt it. When a player is reported, the ICC should quickly arrange for his action to be evaluated by experts who have the latest technology at their disposal. And hey, there are just some such folk at the University of Western Australia. Based on that assessment, ICC should give a clear judgement on the player's action — end of story. If he is cleared, umpires and referees should not act like wise guys and report him again, unless his action changes. No lingering doubts about the player's future, no scope for boards to pervert the system, and no concern that the player has not been evaluated by the best technology. ICC could even ask boards to shoulder the cost, which would help instil some responsibility and keep out time wasters.

Such a process would, I believe, eliminate what is so harmful in the current system. What it would not eradicate, however, is that lovely habit of commentators and broadcasters to blow up any hint of a defect in the action of an opposing player, while merrily turning a blind eye to the chuckers in their own team. But that would be asking too much.

Kamran Abbasi, born in Lahore, brought up in Rotherham, is assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. More Kamran Abbasi
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