Ken Borland

With all the varieties of delivery being bowled today – and the pressure to develop them – spinners these days run the risk of falling foul of the International Cricket Council’s rules on fair actions and specifically the 15 degree stipulation.

Sunfoil Dolphins off-spinner Prenelan Subrayen was the latest to be reported for a suspicious action, leading to remedial work and a rapid return to the field for the KwaZulu-Natal side, the 19-year-old playing an important role in their Ram Slam T20 Challenge campaign.

Subrayen’s problems started last August when he went to the ICC U19 World Cup in Australia. His action came under scrutiny after he played all six of South Africa’s matches on their way to the semi-finals, taking seven wickets at an average of just 14.42 and conceding only 2.43 runs per over.

Tests by both the Australian Institute of Sport and the Sports Science Institute of South Africa deemed Subrayen’s action to be illegal and in December he was sent back to his province to undergo rehabilitation.

The doosra is normally the delivery that causes problems, but in the case of Subrayen, it was his changes of pace that caused his elbow to bend beyond 15 degrees when bowling.

“I have the leggie, but no I don’t have the doosra. I only have three different balls and it was my variation of pace that was causing my elbow to bend,” Subrayen said.

The youngster took what is quite probably the worst news a bowler can get in his stride, and the fact that he was able to play for his club and the Dolphins side in the Franchise Cubs Week as a specialist batsman made all the difference.

“It was a shock, but not in a bad way. I took it as positive criticism and it made me work harder. I’ve had issues before, I’ve been tested before and it helped in a big way that I was still able to play as a batsman. I wasn’t totally torn away from the cricket field and I was able to keep my mind fresh and in the game,” Subrayen said.

Dolphins coach Lance Klusener, who worked with assistant coach Rivash Gobind and former Natal coach Phil Russell in rectifying Subrayen’s action, said the fact that the Glenwood High School product is so mature and has a very good understanding of his action ensured that the process took less than two months.

“Prenelan’s extremely mature for a 19-year-old and he knows exactly how his body works in terms of his action. That made the corrective work much easier and enabled the problem to get sorted ASAP.

“Normally it only happens when a bowler is 25 or 26 that they work out how their body feels, whether they’re falling over or not, whether they can self-correct or not. I get the feeling that Prenelan can already do that,” Klusener said.

After spending some time under the watchful eye of the trio of KZN coaches, Subrayen then travelled to Cape Town with the Dolphins as the 12^th man for a four-day game against the Cobras, allowing High Performance Manager Vincent Barnes the chance to work with him and give the go-ahead for the Verulam lad to be tested again.

“Initially the testing is done at their home base with every bowling session being videoed and every change being monitored. You can’t do it with the naked eye, you have to go back and compare the videos. The High Performance staff then work with the bowler for four to six days and when we think he’s ready for the final test, only then do we use the better cameras at the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town,” Barnes said.

“The bowler has to groove his new action, he has to learn it, he has to feel it,” the former Proteas bowling coach said.

“It wasn’t something very difficult to change, it was more about my feet positioning. The younger you are, the better you can change because as you get older, you get more used to your illegal action,” Subrayen said.

Apart from the hard work of Klusener, Gobind, Russell and Barnes, as well as previous input from specialist spin coaches Shafiek Abrahams and Paul Adams, Subrayen said he couldn’t have sailed through the process without the support of his parents, especially father Kugan, the Level III-certified head coach of Verulam Cricket Club.

But it clearly helps that Subrayen is a player who understands his action so well and Klusener has high hopes for his young charge.

“He potentially has 20 years of spin bowling left and he’s exceptionally talented. He knows what he wants to achieve and he’s a good batsman too, people will see that in time. The key is that he knows what he’s doing with the ball,” Klusener said.

The Subrayen case was complicated by the badly dislocated shoulder he suffered several years ago, but with the shoulder now at pretty much 100%, the jerkiness in his action gone and the experience from the hard school of knocks adding to the natural talent he undoubtedly has, the future is bright for the disciplined, but passionate youngster.

The Pakistan cricket team have asked their board to take up the numerous dubious HotSpot decisions that were made against them in the first Test at the Wanderers with the International Cricket Council, their manager confirmed on Monday.

“We have given a report about it to our board and they will take it further,” Pakistan team manager Naveed Cheema told the Daily Maverick after they had succumbed to a 211-run defeat at the hands of South Africa.

It is believed their unhappiness will also form a large part of their standard report on the umpiring that is sent to the ICC after all Tests.

On the five occasions in the Test that a review was asked for and HotSpot was used, all five decisions went against Pakistan.

Matters came to a head on the second day when Misbah ul-Haq was given out caught behind for 12, having originally been adjudged not out by on-field umpire Billy Bowden. South Africa called for a review and HotSpot showed no conclusive evidence that the ball had hit the bat, but third umpire Steve Davis gave the Pakistan captain out, leading to an animated expression of disbelief from coach Dav Whatmore in the changeroom.

What really upset Pakistan was that on the first day, AB de Villiers (twice) and Faf du Plessis had both enjoyed positive results from reviews because HotSpot displayed a similar lack of evidence.

The inconsistency was obvious and, on the final day, Umar Gul was given out caught behind on review with HotSpot again not showing any mark on the bat.

The inconsistent application and performance of HotSpot – on the third day it clearly showed edges – has sparked new controversy over the Decision Review System (DRS) and the use of technology in cricket.

But if we accept that technology is now part of the furniture in cricket’s living room, should we be blaming the system when some incompetent human uses it incorrectly and falls off the couch?

According to the match referee, Jeff Crowe, Davis was looking at direct-feed, super-enhanced images different to what everyone else saw on TV.

But, even if this was true and the images were so much better than the regular pictures bounced off satellites into our televisions, it would totally defeat the object of the DRS.

The DRS was introduced to put an end to obviously bad decisions that were then replayed on TV so everyone was aware of them; before widespread live coverage of cricket, the system was not necessary because mistakes were less obvious.

For the public to be told, “don’t worry, you’re not seeing the whole picture” is totally unsatisfactory and takes us back to the old days when the first time people became aware of a bad decision was reading about it in the newspaper the next day. People still see the replays and are unlikely to buy this disingenuous justification from the ICC.

Besides, the scoreboard at the Wanderers, which runs on the same direct feed the third umpire gets, was showing images identical to the ones broadcast on TV, albeit a couple of seconds earlier.

There is not much wrong with the DRS system if it is used properly. As soon as concerns were expressed on the first day with HotSpot, it should have been scrapped for this Test.

The system is there to reduce controversy in international cricket, by taking away the howler, but with the players now using DRS tactically and the umpires sometimes not having the nous to use it correctly, the technology is often stealing the limelight unnecessarily.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-02-05-pakistan-turn-heat-on-hotspot/#.UZzHwqI3A6w