18 November 2004	Thursday	05 Shawwal 1425

LAHORE, Nov 17: Former Pakistan great Javed Miandad believed that International Cricket Council (ICC) will be wrong if it adopts recommendations of a committee allowing bowlers to straighten their arms by up to 15 degrees.

"It will be a mistake after mistake and it is feared more harm than good will be done to the game," Miandad told Dawn on Wednesday. An ICC committee comprising Test players has been formed to consider the rules of chucking and it has recommended that bowlers should be allowed to straighten their arms by up to 15 degrees.

Miandad remarked that the ICC had already made a mistake of allowing bowlers to straighten their arms up to 10 degrees and instead of eliminating this unfair practice the international body was making it worse.

"The original task of the ICC is to clean the game of any unfairness and to promote it through legal means, but by adopting such recommendations the game will suffer," he opined.

Miandad, however, agreed that those bowlers, who had problems in their body structure should be allowed such concessions. He specified that after this rule, the batsmen would be on the receiving end, while bowlers would have extraordinary advantage which was unfair.

The ICC committee has discovered that 99 percent bowlers have been involved in chucking, therefore, it should be allowed. Miandad stressed that it might be true that former bowlers had been chucking occasionally, but allowing chucking completely on the basis of such a argument was not logical. Instead, practical measures should be taken by the ICC to bring down chucking to a minimum level if it can not be erased completely.