God help me - the Test Cricket thread

[LP]

With the use of modern technology, the panel also found that legendary bowlers such as Dennis Lillee, Fred Trueman, Richard Hadlee, Curtly Ambrose, Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Allan Donald, although they looked perfect to the naked eye, also bent their arms too much when bowling, meaning they, too, were throwing.

That was the biggest crock of crap of all time. I competed in Australia's fastest bowler competition with Lillee, Thompson, Hurst and others, as did many young fast bowlers around the country. The competition was actually conducted by Lillee's surgeon as part of a study about stress injuries on fast bowlers backs. We all got to see bowling actions side on in super slow motion, we bowled in front of a huge piece of graph paper being filmed by a high speed camera.

The truth is that under enough force at the moment of delivery a fast bowlers arm bends, like a fishing rod, but the Murali boosters tried to paint that as straightening your arm by more than 5°. Lillee, Thompson, Hurst, all of them bowled with locked elbows, Murali bowled with an elbow flick like somebody making a back-handed throw.

You can mimic Murali's action by holding your arm up in front of your face, scratching your head then straightening your arm, the elbow faced the batsmen when he bowled the wrong-un, that's why it was a throw.

When Murali was investigated he point blank refused to bowl in short sleeves, because he said he suffered duress due to a deformity in his arm.

After the Whatmore racism claims were aired they all went quiet, none of the players, past-players or officials wanted the grief they would get when playing or working in the sub-continent. Back in those days foreigners were being kidnapped or blown up in Columbo regularly!

btw., Steve Waugh pumps up Murali as the best because he genuinely hates Warne's guts and he knows it gets under Warne's skin!