C_C said:
Contact UWA in any official capacity. i think they will oblige you.
I'm coming at this whole dumb issue from a completely neutral position - I draw my own conclusions afterwards.
For the umpteenth time, I am not working for or against Murali, but I find carrying out any dialogue with some people in this argument on either side to be tedious in the extreme.
I said a week ago that your (C_C's) attitude over the whole affair was "It's a secret" - and once more, you seem to confirm that supposition. Why is it so hard to obtain these specific figures that you are so fond of quoting, and why are you so keen to protect your source?
You seem to be in possession of facts that don't appear to be in the public domain, yet you are unwilling to share them. Even in a court of law, if something is used as evidence for the defence, it has to be made available to the prosecution or it can't be used.
I wondered whether you were quoting directly from the report issued by Bruce Elliott et al in April 2004 (I'm not aware that there has been any subsequent testing of Muralitharan since then) - and this didn't contain any references (or so it seemed) to Glenn McGrath.
If the information that forms the basis of your comparison was in this report, don't you think that papers such as
The Hindu would have been all over it at the end of April 2004? It's only natural, because at that stage the limit for a fast bowler was 10%, was it not? Therefore McGrath would have been branded a 'chucker' at the time, and not just a year and a half later when the 'Murali v Warne' thread was started on these boards. Stands to reason, doesn't it? On reflection, what's reason got to do with it?
Just after
The Hindu article was published, McGrath's name appears in an article by Mukal Kesavan called
Degrees of Guilt (June 2004, syndicated) where he uses a strange choice of words:
I have thought for some time now that the bounce Glenn McGrath extracts from just short of a good length owes something to a straightening arm and I was delighted to find support for this view in a recent article by Simon Hughes in The Daily Telegraph. Here's the quote: "Courtney Walsh was never called for chucking and neither was Glenn McGrath. Yet McGrath gets some of his pace from a hyperextension of the elbow which varies in extent"
Everything now points to Simon Hughes as the source...
November 2004, just after the publication of the new tolerances, he said in the
Daily Telegraph "
Those working in television, watching in super slow-motion, soon realised there were obvious amounts of bend or whip in some bowlers' actions – Glenn McGrath was one who raised eyebrows, Andrew Hall another. But we were loath to highlight it knowing it would become a contentious issue and possibly jeopardise the player's career." (note no figures)
But the one that started it off was in April 2004 when he said "
....Yet McGrath gets some of his pace from a hyper-extension of the elbow which varies in extent. Shoaib Akhtar is a similar case. In fact most fast bowlers flex their elbow slightly at some point in delivery. I would go so far as to say virtually all of them inadvertently 'throw' the odd ball. If Law 24.3 was applied ultra-rigorously, there would not be many fast bowlers still playing.
As it is, there has to be a bit of leeway, in the same way that a batsman, hit on the pad apparently in front of the stumps, is often given the benefit of doubt.
If the Muralitharan issue only underlines the super- ficiality of television cameras then so be it. It's all we've got. Until someone invents a 3D version, the doubters better put up or shut up.. (note - no figures again).
Two conclusions:
1. The damned figures don't exist anywhere other than in C_C's imagination.
2. Despite that, I am now utterly convinced that the tolerances applied are no more and no less than good sense.
Now I really, REALLY am finished with the whle issue (unless somene produces these figures - or at least produces a valid reference that I can use to drive the UWA research library service)
have informed you of the secret cameras that were placed around the grounds in all test matches since 1908 with a view to recording flexion in bowlers' actions (despite this term not having been invented at the time). The resultant films were then sealed in a time capsule and are due to be released upon the sale of the first"Happy Meal" following the toss of the 2015 World Cup Final.
