If we accept the premise that all bowling actions are suspect and always have been because science says so, then we can be very comfortable with whatever is happening on the field these days.

However, it is also an indubitable fact that some of the funniest actions by slow bowlers have been seen in the most modern era. Blame it on the systemic changes brought in.

In the old days, many of today’s spinners would not have been allowed to bowl because the umpires were in charge and they would have weeded out the young bowlers with suspect actions. Today, ‘human movement’ experts are determining what is a throw and what is not. The ‘open’ era of bowling began when the boffins were allowed in.

The action of Saeed Ajmal is the worst seen in cricket in many years. If anyone can virtually stop his bowling arm at one point and still deliver to generate a fair nip off the pitch, his action would have been considered highly suspicious and he would have been warned off the game if he could not correct his action.

As stated before, the era is ruled by boffins to whom everything is empirical. It is all a question of degrees now and it’s a bit difficult to see through all that science tells us. But then we can’t be seen to be Luddites who have no faith in seeing bowlers wired to some contraption that measures the angles and the degree of bend and what not. However, a point to consider is all such examination is carried out in laboratory conditions.

The moment you air doubts about laboratory conditions being very artificial and nowhere close to simulating the match ambience, the boffins will argue that they have everything under control and that they know when a bowler is faking it. Well, it is all so scientific there are supposed to be no arguments. Suffice it to say Geoffrey Boycott’s mum had a better bowling action when she threw the ball at her favourite in the back garden.

Eras in bowling actions are best defined as ‘Before Murali’ and ‘After Murali’. Cricket changed once Murali was allowed to flex his elbow and straighten his bowling arm with the law being changed to accommodate his helicopter wrist and his rubber elbow. Ajmal goes one step further and bowls off his shoulder and if he can do his contortions and still stay within the laws as defined by the boffins who can argue and to what avail?

What sets modern bowling apart is the doosra. It may have existed in different forms and under different names at various times in cricket history. John Gleason bowled it in times close to the present. Now that elbow flexion has been eased to 15 degrees, the doosra has become a legal weapon in the hands of many off spinners.

Truth to tell, the inventor, or should we say the reviver of the art, Saqlain Mushtaq, bowled it with a far cleaner action than others who also perfected the bowling of the wrong ‘un and so profited immensely by being able to bowl it after umpires had been stripped of their power to ‘call’ a bowler. Officials can only report a bowler who will then go to the University of Western Australia to prove what a legal bowler he is.

It does appear the new degree of flexion has left all bowlers feeling lily white. What Ajmal said a couple of days ago may have been lost in translation and hence some doubt has been cast on the very definition of legality. All that has been cleared up now and the boffins say everything is fine.

Bent arms are allowed so long as they are not straightened more than 15 degrees. Ajmal was said to have straightened his arm only 10 degrees for his off breaks and seven degrees for his doosra. Bowlers like Andrew Flintoff, Glenn McGrath and Allan Donald, who were measured as part of an ICC study over 10 years ago were said to have straightened their arms more.

If we accept the results of the ICC study and the results of scientific studies done in WA, we may conclude that scoring runs in the most modern era is actually more difficult. Let’s praise the modern batsmen, thoroughly spoiled in many other ways, for being able to score so much.

Poor guys have had to suffer more in trying to read the ball through al these quirks that are allowed under the laws now.