ABSTRACT
As cricket moved into the 1990s and then into the twenty-first century, we can find striking evidence of the repetition of by now familiar themes. Allegations and insinuations about the legality of some bowlers’ actions emerged. Questions about the appropriate interpretation of the Laws dealing with illegal deliveries were raised. Umpires who ‘called’ bowlers for throwing were vilified as racists and cheats, or lauded for their courage in upholding the letter of the law and the true spirit of the game. The battle between bat and ball was saved from cheating bowlers or endangered by overzealous adjudication. Doubts seemed to emerge as wickets fell, indicating again for some that throwing has more to do with success than a desire to stamp out cheating. Bowlers resorted to the modern equivalent of ‘bowling in splints’ as expert medical advice and biomechanical analyses were trotted out to prove that the bowler’s arm was congenitally deformed and that what might have looked like throwing was in fact nothing more than an optical illusion. In other words, in this area of the law and Laws of cricket there was and is little new under the jurisprudential sun.
