ICC to extend testing for bowlers

Caption: The $29 million National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, which opened last November and pictured above, includes a state-of-the-art advanced motion analysis camera system in the indoor nets facility

The International Cricket Council's renewed push to stamp out chucking will be further boosted in the next two months by the addition of three newly accredited testing centres spread throughout the cricket-playing world.

Previously, only the University of Western Australia in Perth was approved by the ICC to test suspected illegal bowling actions, but it withdrew from official involvement with the game's governing body in March.

Since then Cardiff's Metropolitan University had been testing bowlers on the ICC's behalf, but the move to spread the testing responsibilities to three centres, which are affiliated with each country's cricket board, is hoped to hasten the crackdown on illegal bowling actions.

In particular, the ICC is keen to see a proactive approach to eliminating throwing with more testing done at a domestic level before bowlers reach international cricket.

Options other than a single centre in Perth will also help overcome logistical and geographical concerns, particularly for associate nations.

The issue of bent-arm bowling has been thrust back into the spotlight after the world's leading spinner, Pakistan's Saeed Ajmal, was reported for a suspected illegal action in last week's Test match against Sri Lanka in Galle.

In the past nine months Shane Shillingford, Marlon Samuels, Kane Williamson and Sachithra Senanayake have all been banned from bowling, and Ajmal now must pass the ICC's tests or face a similar fate.

The increased attention on throwing comes after a recommendation from the ICC's cricket committee in June, when the ICC’s general manager of cricket Geoff Allardice said more bowlers needed to be tested.

"There’s enough bowlers with suspect actions that should be scrutinised that probably haven’t been," said Allardice.

"The cricket committee was of the view that there are some bowlers operating with suspect actions that should be scrutinised a bit more closely."

Despite no longer being an accredited testing centre the UWA, with cricket's foremost biomechanical expert Dr Daryl Foster, is currently working with Sri Lankan Senanayake to re-model his action after he was found to have exceeded the 15-degree limit in testing at Cardiff's Metropolitan University in June.

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The ICC said the UWA's decision to withdraw its services in March accelerated the development of its own testing protocol, which will be the standard in place for the newly accredited centres.

While having a sole testing centre allowed consistency of testing, it provided significant geographical and logistical hurdles.

The ICC says having new centres in three countries, and the willingness of other countries to set up centres of their own in the next two years, will improve access to testing for all bowlers, particularly those at domestic level and from associate nations.

"Sending bowlers to Perth proved impractical for a number of countries, and as a consequence the screening of bowlers with suspect actions at domestic level was not as rigorous as the ICC would have liked," an ICC spokesman said.

The location of the three new centres is yet to be revealed, but the ICC confirmed the centres all have a relationship with the cricket boards in those countries.

The ICC is confident its process, which would see results scrutinised by an independent panel of experts, is transparent and robust enough to avoid any claims of national bias.

"The process is now more independent than it has ever been," the ICC spokesman said.

"The testing centre and biomechanical staff will still be engaged and paid by the ICC, as they have been previously.

"If scientists were not considered to be independent, then we wouldn't have entertained the concept that an Australian institution could be used as the sole testing centre – potentially testing Australian bowlers, for example.

"The process will be further enhanced as biomechanists from different countries are accredited to conduct tests on behalf of the ICC."