Abdullah, your argument is flawed. Your heart is obviously in the right place but I'm afraid you cannot see past your Sub-continent pride.

I believe that bowlers should be able to get some assistance when it comes to the ball as boundaries are shrinking, bats have more power and the bowler's weapons such as short balls are greatly diminished. No doubt anyone who has bowled at a high level had done what they could, short of ripping the ball up with your spikes, to elicit extra swing from the ball. (I know I have)

So I maintain that it doesn't matter what country you are from, they all have done it. The issue you speak of is a media issue, not an umpiring/policing issue.

Hair was pilloried for his actions when there was another umpire plus a match referee there. They were all reponsible, as were Pakistan for not returning to the field like a bunch of snotty kids.

As for Murali - as the laws stood at the time, he was chucking. The umpires were correct to call him.

Warnsie, you are wrong. What he is saying is that the Pakistanis were accused of doing similar things to which Thresco admitted, and were labelled cheats, yet when Thresco did it, everyone seems fine with it. That IS a double standard, because there were murmurs along the official lines too. Players said the Pakistanis were cheating and nothing was done to them! Whether bowlers should get the assistence is another issue. What is true is that when the same thing (reverse swing) was applied the Pakistanis were accused of cheating and the Brits were praised with talent. How can you say that's not a double standard? As for Murali, as the law stood at the time 99.9% of the bowlers were chucking, so why not call them all? Why single him out? Before anyone accuses me of "asian pride" im australian, but it is important that we see things for what they are, like you yourself said, without the nationalistic tinge of green and gold (or red and white for that matter)

Warnesie, I agree that bowlers should be able to get some assistance, but that is not what the law currently is. If Wasim and Waqar and others were accussed of "ball tampering", then so should Marcus be.

You are right though, its a media issue and specifically a UK tabloaid one. I remember in early 90's the UK press having front page headlines of "Cheats" with Wasim and Waqar pictured....but no such headlines this time. Let Botham also come out and label Marcus a cheat....but oh no, that might tarnish the greatest achievemnt of the England cricket team in the last 15 years.

So you can appreciate where the "double standards" accusations come from...

You should have stopped after the first paragraph before you undermined your point with victimist diatribe.

"If it was so, then the current Pakistani fast bowlers would be winning matches as well" - you seem to be overlooking the small fact that half of the Pakistani bowlers at any given time are languishing in jails or banned for drug-taking.

Feel free to have a go at Marcus Trescothick by all means but your piece is essentially racist and overlooks so many obvious facts that's laughable.

Warnsie, I think you are hitting the wrong nail. The discussion here is not whether mints and sweets should be made legal for shining the ball. The discussion is what would the reaction have been if the same admission had come from a subcontinent player?

I can assure you there wouldn't have been so many statements saying it is OK!! The player would have been pilloried.. the same ex-players like Ian Chappell, Tony Grieg etc etc would have been demanding a ban on the player, stricter rules on what players take into the ground and so on. There is a clear bias in cricket, and unfortunately well-meaning people like you don't see it...

"Darrel Hair was so quick in penalising the Pakistani team for ball tampering that he did not even give it a second thought, and on what evidence...his instincts !" Urm... WRONG! Here's whats really rich about Marcus's revelation and that Oval Test. I distinctly remember reports that it was someone from the English camp who slipped some "advice" to the match referee and the umpires about alleged ball tampering by the Pakistanis prior to the actual incident. So in other words, while now suddenly we're hearing all this tosh about how everyone's been doing it for years, back then an English side that was using artificial substances to check the natural deterioration of the ball had the audacity to ask the officials to keep an eye on their opponents. Now that stress free Marcus has come out with this, I hope the every match ball England uses is subjected to tests after the game, otherwise the officials would definitely have shown double standards.

One very important point has been missed here. It was actually Marcus Trescothick who first raised the ball tampering issue with the umpires during the Oval test. It was Marcus who was watching on the balcony with his binoculars to see if he could catch the Pakistani players cheating. Cheeky BarSteward!

Enough, please! Ball 'tampering' of this sort has been done for decades, condoned by all and sundry, and all professional cricketers know it. Why do you think so many of them wear so much sun cream? As usual, it's been made an issue by the tabloid media hungry for a sniff of controversy. It is not an issue, and the practice won't change because of all this silly brouhaha.

Also, it's not the same as the tampering Pakistan were accused of in 1992. In that case one of their bowlers was filmed on national TV deliberately picking the seam out with his fingernails. That is a far more blatant violation of the rules than using a bit of sweetened spit to polish the ball. So the double-standard accusation is a a bit over-the-top and rather provocative.

And another thing. Trescothick was referring to the 2001 Ashes when he told about this, which England lost, not the 2005 Ashes (although presumably the practice continued then too).

Now, can we please get back to the cricket?

I respect your sentiments, but your argument is I'm afraid somewhat flawed and you appear rather confused. First up, getting shine on the ball (ala Trescothick) DOES NOT assist reverse swing, it assists conventional swing. Secondly, to get the ball to 'reverse swing' you need to ROUGHEN the shiny side NOT polish it (as well as keeping it bone dry) and finally there's no law in Cricket that says you cannot suck sweets and no law in cricket that says you cannot use saliva or spit to shine the ball. What you CANNOT do is scratch, pick, abrade or alter the surface of the ball artificially in any way and that's what Waqar was accused of and found guilty of doing, and that I'm afraid as far as the laws of cricket are concerned is cheating. You've already admitted that England used reverse swing to win the Ashes and they did, but nothing Trescothick did would have helped that. I therefore strongly suggest you check your facts first, before you go off on a rant about double standards, because

ScottWozniak, I might be dimmer than I think I am, but I thought reverse swing happened by keeping one side of the ball rough and the other shiny. The shinier you get one side relative to the other (or alternatively, the rougher you get one side relative to the other), the more the wall reverse-swings.

Given that, I would think roughening up one side of the ball carries exactly the same significance as smoothening the other side?

I remember the Dravid tampering incident, too (which series was it? Don't remember). He got caught on TV rubbing a lozenge on the ball and that was blown out of proportion too, wasn't it? He was doing exactly what Trescothick admitted to doing (though he didn't do it on TV), so going by your logic, he should have been ignored. But was he?

I think it's a fair point. It's much easier to castigate someone else than one of your own. That stands for all countries, all races, all cultures.

What about Dravid applying a lolly on the ball and stating that it would have come on the ball whilst he was trying to lick the ball ?? Tresco was wrong but what is the use of the ozies crying or for that matter anyone crying long after the event - cheating is wrong no matter from what part of the world you come from and it is left to the officials to ban these individuals for life and I home they do it with our very own Mohamed Asif for his use of banned drugs.

Sharath, what you describe is conventional swing, it doesn't explain why the ball swings in the opposite direction for the same given seam orientation and side of the ball. For clarity, you bowl a conventional outswinger by having the shiny side of the ball on the right and the rough side on the left. To reverse swing the same ball, it becomes an inswinger, so why does it change direction? A cricket ball swings due to the air travelling over one side at a different rate to the other and this is caused by the different surface 'smoothness' of one side relative to the other. When the original 'shiny' side of the ball starts to roughen, in the same way as the original 'rough' side was allowed to roughen, the air changes preference for which side of the ball it wants to travel round the faster and that's why the ball changes direction. As you can see, to get reverse swing you need to allow the shiny side to roughen, not to keep polishing it.

every side pushs the boundaries of acceptable behavior, anyone who believes THEIR side doesn't is being desparately naive. every now & then someone will get caught with their hand in the till. at which point there will be cries of double standards. BOOOORRRRRRRRING. everybody is a HYPOCRITE trying to pretend otherwise is laughable.

ScottWozniak :: i believe u need to consult a fast bowler from Asia and i mean ASIAN becuase this is the only reason and i m confident after reading your arguments regarding reverse swing tehcniques, that westerns are not good at all with reverse swing :-D....no offense .just a suggestion :-)

coming back to the point..guys for once please think about the GAME ..yeah CRICKET for heaven sake..forget about who is playing the game..if some one is guilty then he is accountable for it. if body is innocent then let him live and play. international cricket means a lot to these profesionals. they play it for their countries and not to be caught cheating on TV..so get on with these things..