KARACHI: Former Pakistan spinner Saqlain Mushtaq wants the International Cricket Council (ICC) to review its existing 15-degree arm/elbow extension law for bowlers.
Saqlain, who is presently head coach at the Pakistan Cricket Board’s High Performance Centre in Lahore, said the law is discouraging youngsters from taking up the art of off-spin bowling. “I would like to know how the ICC experts reached this conclusion of allowing only 15-degrees latitude to bowlers. Did they do research on Asian players, Caribbean players, others because everyone is different.
“Asian players’ bodies are different, they tend to have more flexibility in their arms and some have hyper mobile joints. If you look at Caribbean or English players their bodies are different,” Saqlain said in an interview.
He noted that even carry angle, meaning flexibility in arms while in standing posture, is different in Asian players.
“I think the ICC should review this law because the 15-degrees latitude is too little. It is discouraging players from the art of offspin bowling.”
“I personally believe that one can bowl off-breaks, doosra and top spin even within the law but since it came out I have seen players who used to bowl off-spin now becoming leg-spinners or wrist spinners,” he said.
Saqlain, who ended an illustrious career with 208 Test and 288 ODI wickets and made the Doosra ball famous, believed that a off-spinner can also be successful in white ball formats if he has a good set of skills and it is not necessary to be able to bowl the doosra to be effective.
Saqlain also felt that teams were not relying on specialist off-break bowlers in white ball formats because of an increasing trend
of using wrist spinners.
“It is an ongoing trend in white ball formats that teams want to have maximum wrist spinners like India has Chahal and Yadav,
—PTI

Press Trust of India