Integrity at stake over bowling doosra: Inverarity

Australia chief selector urges caution over learning the delivery.

SYDNEY: Australia chairman of selectors John Inverarity urged caution over producing a generation of chuckers by teaching the doosra to the country’s aspiring spin bowlers.

The doosra, a difficult-tobowl leg-spinner delivered with an off-spinning action, has been a key weapon for leading sub-continent slow bowlers in Test cricket, including Sri Lanka’s retired world-record holder Muttiah Muralitharan and Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal. Muralitharan claimed last month that Australia’s failure to produce a top-line spinner since Shane Warne’s retirement from Tests in 2007 can be attributed to the regimented attitude of the nation’s coaches.

But former Test batsman Inverarity, 68, has cautioned against the clamour among Australia’s spin fraternity to embrace the doosra. “That’s a question of integrity for Cricket Australia.

If you’re going to bowl a doosra, that’s how you do it, ” Inverarity said in response to a question from a luncheon guest about whether the doosra constituted chucking. “It’s a serious issue. We’ve got to keep our integrity. We’ve got to teach our bowlers to bowl properly. “I’m all for them learning it, but it has got to be within the rules, for the integrity of the game and Australia’s cricket heritage.

“We should always run a measure over them to make sure they’re bowling legitimately [according to the 15-degree threshold rule for elbow flexion].” Inverarity’s comments are likely to be met with scepticism in Asia, where most bowlers of the doosra originate. Australia captain George Bailey returned from the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka this month calling for CA to look closely at coaching young spinners to bowl the doosra.

“You look at the guys who did well, the guys who have doosras and leg-spinners who have real weapons in their armoury, ” said Bailey. “You look at the subcontinent spinners, they use the 14 degrees in their elbow.

I know it ruffles a few feathers with their actions but you need that to bowl those doosras. “I don’t think we have got those coaches over here that know how to do that. I think we have to access some of the subcontinent coaches.” The ‘doosra’ – literally ‘the second one’ in Urdu – was invented by former Pakistani off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2012.