Under the spotlight © AFP

Bishan Bedi has been sent a letter by Muttiah Muralitharan’s lawyers for comments he made recently about the off-spinner's bowling action and newspapers report that these lawyers are threatening to ‘drag him to the courts’ if his response is unsatisfactory. Bedi, as everyone knows, has form when it comes to denouncing Murali’s action. There used to be a whole chorus of ex-players who were happy to call Muralitharan’s action illegal. Now, as far as I can tell from the papers, there are just two. I remember reading Martin Crowe a few months ago, arguing that Muralitharan’s action ought to be formally examined at regular intervals and the second, of course, is Bedi.

Muralitharan’s other critics (Michael Holding, Ian Botham etc.) have fallen silent. This could be because they’ve been persuaded by the ICC’s argument that modern cameras have proven beyond reasonable doubt that nearly all international bowlers ‘flex’ (i.e. bend and straighten) their arms while bowling. Consequently (I’m speculating here) they’ve come to accept that a bowler who keeps his flexion inside the 15 degree limit deemed legal by the ICC, isn’t a chucker.

So what keeps Crowe and Bedi going? I don’t know Crowe at all, but I do know Bedi a little and it was at an event in Delhi organized around my book, Men in White, that he said the things that set off the controversy. The event was meant to be a chat about cricket with Bishan Bedi as the main attraction. I was on the panel because I’d written the book and Gaurav Kalra, the sports editor at CNN-IBN, was moderating the discussion.

I asked Bedi why there hadn’t been a decent book written by an Indian cricketer in the last fifty years (apart for Sunil Gavaskar’s Sunny Days) despite the fact that lots of our Test cricketers were university boys. Erapalli Prasanna, his ‘spin twin’ in the late Sixties and Seventies had produced One More Over, a dreadful ghost-written thing, turned out in a week. Bedi didn’t really have an answer; ask him a question and instead of an answer, you generally get a really funny story and, at some point, an opinion.

So there was a story about Prasanna and his anxiety about being selected when Wadekar took over from Pataudi and a little later a story about Madan Lal playing Jeff Thomson from well beyond the leg-stump in Perth which stopped the discussion for a couple of minutes as the largely middle-aged audience screamed with laughter. Typically, Bedi followed up the story with the observation that we needed to remember that Madan Lal was playing the fastest bowler ever without a helmet and that there were one or two batsmen in the current Indian team who owed their reputations to the insurance they wore on their heads.

Then Gaurav asked him a question about Muralitharan and Bedi weighed in with his views which were familiar since he’s aired them so often. But because they were aired here in the context of a discussion (and in response to questions from the audience) they offered offered clues to his position on Muralitharan in particular and chucking in general.

Bedi seems to believe that the congenital crookedness of Murali’s arm is used as an alibi to shield him from the charge of chucking. Murali’s defenders make two points. One, if Murali’s arm seems crooked in the early part of his action, it isn’t a preliminary to straightening it: it’s just the way his arm is. Two, when an arm with a bent elbow is rotated, it creates an impression of a kink in the motion, which is an optical illusion.

The reason Bedi won’t accept this as a reasonable explanation is because he believes that the only practical way of supervising legitimate bowling actions is with the naked eye, i.e. what the umpires see in the middle. He refuses to accept that decades of cricketing common sense can be overset by laboratory science or sophisticated cameras.

There was a pointed question from the audience. Had Bedi seen the film of Murali bowling in a brace, where he bowled the off-spinner and the doosra (and turned them) with a rigid, inflexible arm? Bedi again offered his basic position: how do we know that Murali, when bowling a doosra competitively without a brace does not flex it? And who is to call him if he does? If it is the umpires, we have to trust their judgment.

On this point, I think, Bedi is being dogmatic. He (and others) have often asked the rhetorical question, how can any one turn the wrist for the doosra the way Murali does, without bending and straightening the his arm. Well, by bowling in a brace, Murali is trying to answer that question. He’s showing us that it is anatomically possible (for him, at least) to do it. And since so many of us have asked that question, we are bound to attend to his demonstration.

	'There was a pointed question from the audience. Had Bedi seen the film of Murali bowling in a brace, where he bowled the off-spinner and the doosra (and turned them) with a rigid, inflexible arm?'© Getty Images

This still does not rule out the possibility that in the heat of battle Murali may consciously or unaware, flex his arm to really rip the doosra. Bedi has made a serious point about the supervision of the game in general, not just the matter of policing Murali which the ICC needs to take seriously. Murali isn’t responsible for his imitators, but the ICC’s rulings change cricket from the highest level to the lowest, and I’ve seen children in neighbourhood parks manage very creditable imitations of Murali’s bowling style, happily bending and straightening their arms because they know its allowed on television. When Bedi says the ICC has created a monster, he doesn’t mean that Murali has horns: he’s being metaphorical.

But Bedi doesn’t seem to realize that what really annoys Murali’s fans and supporters is the implication that the ICC introduced the 15 degree rule to fit Murali in. The truth is that to start with the ICC introduced differential limits of flexion (5 degrees for spinners, 7.5 degrees for medium pacers, 10 degrees for fast bowlers) and when the unfairness and impracticality of this was pointed out, abandoned this plan. The fifteen degree rule happened after a study of the actions of international bowlers revealed that nearly every bowler bent and straightened his arm, including fast-bowling paragons like Glenn McGrath. Critics of Murali like Holding did an about-face when shown the evidence and by and large, the cricket world followed suit.

I asked Bedi what he thought of the finding that nearly everyone chucked, including bowlers who had never come close to being called like McGrath and Gillespie. Bedi dismissed the point. McGrath’s bowling action, he asserted, was pure (his word) and the only way you could judge the legality of a bowler’s delivery was relying on the human eye. McGrath looked legal, so he was legal.

Oddly enough, this is very close to the position the ICC took when it introduced the fifteen degree law. The ICC’s justification for flexion up to fifteen degrees is the argument that till that point (15 degrees), the human eye can’t see the bending and straightening that occurs. It’s only the modern camera that can catch that kink in a bowler’s action. The ICC is looking for historical continuity: it is implying that the 15 degree rule isn’t sanctioning a new era of chuckers: it is merely formalising a ‘flexion’ that always existed in international cricket but which couldn’t be discerned or measured because we didn’t have modern cameras and the apparatus of sports science.

	Tony Lock © The Cricketer International

Not unnaturally, Bedi isn’t keen to buy this argument. Bedi, by near-universal agreement, had one of the loveliest slow bowling actions in the history of the game and he refuses to accept that he and his spinning contemporary were actually chuckers but didn’t know it. He didn’t turn the ball much and a bit of ‘flexion’ might have helped him turn it more, but that didn’t fall within his understanding of the dharma of a bowler (as it was then defined) and he thinks that the ICC’s present permissiveness has slighted cricket’s entire history and the first principles of his craft.

It doesn’t help that the ICC’s rationalisation of the 15 degree rule doesn’t seem to work in real life. I think I can see the kink in Brett Lee’s action, and Harbhajan’s and Shoaib Akhtar’s. So do many other people. Either they’re bending and straightening their arms more than the allowed fifteen degrees and getting away with it or flexion below that fifteen degree ceiling is also visible, which makes a nonsense of the ICC’s rationale for that number. If it’s the latter, then it means that bowlers are getting away with more today than they were getting away with in the past.

Instead of going after Murali as the symbol of modern cricketing decadence, Bedi should be asking the ICC to publish the results of the survey of bowling actions that it undertook, complete with names and degrees of flexion. If it’s technically possible, the sports science boffins should look at older films, say Bedi’s bowling action, and tell us what degree of flexion they found. Once we have numbers on which bowler flexed his arm and by how much, we’ll be in a position to judge whether ICC should bend the rules (as it has done) to fit bowling ‘reality’ or whether bowlers will have to adapt their actions to fit a enforceable ideal. If, for example, a bowler like Jimmy Anderson is found to have flexed his arm appreciably less than, say, Brett Lee, then the ICC needs to lower its level of tolerance to Anderson’s level and force Lee to make changes in his action to conform. Similarly, if to bowl his doosra (or his pehla for that matter) Murali has to flex his arm more than, say, Ramesh Powar, the rules of the game should force him to alter his action. It’s worth remembering that this is exactly what Tony Lock had to do. An attacking left arm spinner, he changed his action in the mid-Fifties after he was called for bowling his faster ball and was never quite the same bowler again.

On the other hand, if the ICC conducts a systematic study of bowling actions past and present and publishes its results, and if these results validate Lee’s action and Muralitharan’s (to name two bowlers, one fast and one slow, whose bowling actions have caused comment) by showing that bowling actions were always thus and it is only modern cameras that highlight kinks which had hitherto blushed unseen, then the ICC could specify a historically consistent level of flexion and dissenters like Bedi and Crowe would have to fall in line or run the risk of being seen as cricket’s cranks, not its conscience-keepers.

Till this happens, we’ll continue to be treated to the depressing spectacle of a magical bowler being singled out and hounded for a system-wide problem. And now, thanks to Muralitharan’s lawyers, we are faced with the squalid prospect of the greatest slow left arm bowler of our times, being sued for speaking his mind (even if we allow that he tends to call a spade a shovel). Muralitharan’s claim to being considered the greatest bowler of all time won’t be settled by a defamation suit. His place in cricket’s history, and cricket’s historical integrity, needs the intervention of the ICC.

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	Zaheer Khan’s performance was a once-in-a-generation spectacle for the Indian fan © Getty Images

One of the hardest things for a fan to do these days is to retain in his mind an uncluttered sense of how the Test team is doing. Test match tours are tacked on to one-day contests, one-day tournaments (the World Cup, the Champions Trophy,) keep elbowing and shoving their way into your consciousness, players are picked and dropped from Test match teams on account of their limited-overs performances, and all these things together create a hybrid sense of well-being or despair.

So before the one-day series against England begins, and before its results colour our feelings about the Test matches that have preceded it, it might be useful to take stock of our standing in the only arena that counts, Test cricket.

Out of 10, I think we’re at 5; if we were using letters instead of numbers, we’d be graded B. We lost to South Africa away and Australia at home when we really shouldn’t have done. We drew against England the last time they toured, when they were an underdone team, and that did us no credit. Losing to Pakistan 1-0 on their grounds wasn’t great but it was sort of acceptable. Beating the West Indies in the Caribbean was a milestone but given how bad Windies are now, beating them 1-0 wasn’t a rousing statement about a resurgent India. Beating Bangladesh was a relief for the reasons referred to in the first paragraph: the modern tendency to let one-day emotions tint our Test match feelings. But this one was different.

One, we beat a decent team that fancied itself after destroying the West Indies. The argument that England was playing its second string pace attack is unpersuasive: if Chris Tremlett, James Anderson and Ryan Sidebottom had won England the first Test (as they nearly did) we wouldn’t have heard any excuses about them being ‘B Team’ back-ups. It’s like an Indian fan sighing for Munaf Patel, L Balaji, Irfan Pathan and Ashish Nehra. In the contemporary game people are always injured and someone generally does the job.

I thought the English bowlers did well: it was their batting that did them in, in the Trent Bridge Test. Sidebottom was my favourite: he bowled well and his look of windblown frustration and wordless rage was a constant delight. I think he was auditioning to play the Saxon serf in a film about the Norman yoke.

Two, the pleasure of watching Sachin Tendulkar grinding out the runs, Sourav Ganguly playing fluently, yet solidly, like a left-handed Gundappa Viswanath and VVS Laxman mothering the lower order like an anxious but elegant stork, was a balm after the perverse disruptions of the Chappell years. For them the series was a vindication. After the ugly, hysterical talk of their selfishness, their lack of team spirit, their nearness to the knacker’s yard, it was good to see them show us what we’ll miss when they do retire. (The shot of the tournament was Anil Kumble's falling inside-edge for a hundred. He was always a bowling Titan; now he's Kanhai.

Three, it was great to watch the young(ish) ones help us win. Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer might, with a bit of luck, be the opening pair India’s been looking for and with Virender Sehwag likely to press for a place, it’s nice to have competition for the opening spots. Mahendra Singh Dhoni showed us why he’s an exceptional player: his ability to adapt his homemade style to every circumstance is endlessly impressive. He’s looked like captaincy material right through this series. (I’ve often wondered what that means: I think it means someone who seems articulate, responsible and composed on and off the field. Dhoni manages that, comfortably) Given that one of my cleverer suggestions before the series began was to play Karthik as 'keeper so India could drop Dhoni for Yuvraj, I'm feeling contentedly foolish. RP Singh was a decent foil to India’s star turn, Zaheer Khan. Zaheer’s performance was a once-in-a-generation spectacle for the Indian fan: I can’t remember the last time an Indian quick was our dominant bowler in all three tests of a series played outside the sub-continent. Even Chetan Sharma, twenty one years ago, starred in only two of the three Tests we played.

Finally, this series was different because it was played on wonderful grounds (lovely to look upon, great drainage, a soothing sense of first-world order) in front of happy full houses. The one thing that qualified my pleasure in that great series we won in Pakistan the time before last, were the empty stands. Things aren’t much better on Indian grounds when Test matches come round. This, when most of the tickets in our stadiums are given away to freeloaders. In England, concessional tickets for the last day were ten pounds for kids and twenty for grown-ups! I can’t bring myself to imagine what full-price tickets cost—and still they pack them in. Watching a match being played in a deserted concrete doughnut is like being shown a preview of Test cricket’s death. In England, on the evidence of this series, the game is triumphantly, joyfully alive.

Still, if Australia is A+, a B is fair. We’ve beaten England, but Sri Lanka looks like the second best team in the world in both forms of the game. Definitely B+. They’ll kill England at home (in the interests of even-handedness let me say that if it was India visiting, they’d kill us too). But I could be persuaded to abandon this measured view quite easily. If we beat Pakistan in India and Australia away… hell, if we lose to Pakistan at home and beat Australia in Australia, we’ll be Masters of the World. We’ll switch grading notations to serve notice that the cricketing balance of power had shifted eastwards: instead of the boring Alpha plus, we’ll be alif awwal.

	Atherton "likes the way Lee says sorry" © Cricinfo Ltd

This is what Michael Atherton had to say about Sreesanth and the beamer he bowled at Kevin Pietersen in the Sunday Telegraph

Mirroring the ICC's misguided sense of priorities, there was little comment in the media about Sreesanth's 'delivery'. This is partly because only one man, Sreesanth himself, knows whether it was deliberate, partly because a coterie of former bowlers in the press box (Mike Selvey an exception) are inclined to take the charitable view that it was not, and partly because there was so much more, other than the cricket, to talk about. But I have no doubt that Sreesanth's rancorous spell, which included the beamer and the no-ball, was the most glaring example in the match of something that ran completely counter to the spirit of the game. Forget the jellybeans and inane chatter.

Certainly, Sreesanth apologised to Pietersen immediately by raising his right hand but he was quick enough to turn to his mark leaving the batsman to dust himself down unattended. The royal wave was all that was needed for him to be portrayed as an innocent in the matter and to be forgiven. Later that evening Paul Collingwood sportingly did so on behalf of the England team, but his acceptance was hardly gushing.

Rather an apology than nothing, but it seems to me that the apology is irrelevant. The damage could have been severe. A batsman is conditioned to look for the ball on a downward trajectory out of the bowler's hand, and therefore will not necessarily pick it up. (The only other time I've seen one bowled in a Test match, by Glenn McGrath, it stuck straight in Mark Ramprakash's grille without the batsman flinching).

Moreover, an apology doesn't necessarily mean it is sincere. With match referees on the prowl, any bowler with an ounce of survival instinct is bound to apologise, deliberately bowled or not. And the batsman/batting side has no option but to accept it, for if it is not accepted then the moral high ground shifts in favour of the bowler, whose integrity is suddenly in question.

Only Sreesanth knows his own mind, but there was a glaring absence of extenuating circumstances: the ball wasn't new and the lacquer had worn off, making it less likely to slip out of his hand; it wasn't wet; he had directional problems but hardly of the 'yips' variety. We do know that, since the ball landed at the wicket-keeper's feet, he missed his length by a good 30 yards, an extraordinary failing for an international bowler. If it did slip, it slipped with remarkable accuracy, honing in on Pietersen's skull. Shortly afterwards he overstepped the front mark by two feet to bowl a rapid bouncer at Collingwood. Sreesanth was hardly in control of his emotions during that particular spell.

If bowled deliberately there cannot be a more cowardly action on a cricket field; if bowled accidentally it is still potentially lethal. Either way it should incur an immediate one-match ban.

And this is what Atherton had to say about Brett Lee and beamers in the Sunday Telegraph just over two years ago (July 9, 2005) when the Australians were touring England.

Controversy, though, has always followed the world's quickest bowlers and Lee is no exception.

Five years ago, Indian umpire Venkat submitted a report which tabled doubts about the legitimacy of Lee's action. Although he was subsequently cleared by the International Cricket Council's expert panel, the suspicions of a kink in Lee's action, especially when he bowls the bouncer, have always remained.

It is precisely the kind of case that forced the ICC to amend their laws on throwing, so allowing bowlers a greater degree of flexion when releasing the ball. Clearly, Lee and others like him are assets to the game even though, occasionally, their actions might break the purest interpretation of the law. The new 15 degree allowance should allow Lee the freedom to bowl at his fastest safe in the knowledge that no umpire will take offence.

The furore that has followed his rather too frequent use of the beamer is easier to justify. The beamer is the hardest ball for a batsman to pick up precisely because it pitches (or doesn't pitch) so far from where the batsman expects. If it is bowled on target, as Lee's invariably is, then it can be lethal. Lee was visibly sheepish after his latest beamer at Marcus Trescothick during the NatWest Series final. After taking Andrew Strauss's wicket shortly afterwards he remained head bowed rather than celebrating in his usual fist-pumping fashion.

His visible embarrassment and immediate fulsome apology convinces me that Lee's beamers are unintentional, although other international bowlers doubt that such a quality performer can be so far out of kilter. The other reason for giving Lee the benefit of the doubt is that he is such a demonstrably decent fellow. His popularity among team-mates, current and former, is legend. Michael Slater, one of the few Australian pundits prepared to speak frankly about former team-mates, says "he's just a champion".

I know exactly what Atherton’s trying to say. He likes the way Lee says sorry. Lee’s faster than Sreesanth, he bowls more beamers than Sreesanth and he says sorry better, more feelingly, than Sreesanth does. There's no inconsistency in Atherton (now) trying to get Sreesanth banned for a match for bowling a beamer and Atherton (then) trying to persuade Australia's selectors to play Lee so he could frighten England in the Ashes series. Once the Indian tour management gets Sreesanth a coach who can teach him to do ‘visibly sheepish’ as well as Lee does, Atherton, being a consistent and principled man, will be content.

	Sachin Tendulkar got a terrible decision when nine short of his century, but India still went ahead and won the Trent Bridge Test © Getty Images

To not drop bouquets of catches, to get Kevin Pietersen out twice in two balls, to have two Indian openers make a small English total look smaller, to be treated to the sight of the appalling Matthew Prior losing his middle stump to a ball from Rudra Pratap Singh that swung round a corner, to puzzle over Zaheer Khan shaking his bat at Pietersen, to read the next day's papers with dawning comprehension, and then to realise with awed delight that England's professionally trained trash-talkers had been reduced to jelly beans, jelly beans, made me wonder if someone had scripted this thing.

The facts are unnatural:

There was a magnificent century struck in a losing cause. By the captain of the other side.

Tendulkar and Ganguly both got rotten decisions within sight of their centuries. India won.

Pietersen stood his ground after an edging a catch to the keeper. The next ball struck his pads. He walked.

An Australian umpire gave three big bad decisions against India and I didn't see muttering desis huddled in knots alleging white collusion and western conspiracy.

This is the season of miracles. If it lasts till the Oval the Indians might even decide that it isn't mandatory to lose a Test match after winning the previous one.

In which case my brother is wrong: it could get better than this.