Former Indian captain Rahul Dravid believes bowlers who have been banned with suspect actions are just suffering from a “technical fault” that can be corrected.
“Personally I don’t think you should see chucking as a crime. I think it is just a technical fault that people have and view it like that,” the batting legend said after delivering the annual Dilip Sardesai Memorial Lecture at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai on Friday.
“You have a technical fault in your action, go out and correct it and come back. You have (bowled) a no-ball when you overstep the line and nobody says you are cheating.
“They say come back behind the line and here they say come back behind 15 degrees (of elbow flexion) and play the game.”
With the International Cricket Council cracking down on chucking recently, there has been a rise in the number of bowlers being reported and subsequently banned if they failed to come up with a legal action.
The ban on world’s top spinner Saeed Ajmal last week was an indication that the ICC was keen to rid the game of bowlers with illegal actions.
The batting legend supported the ICC for putting a a system in place to correct the problem which has plagued the game for a long time.
He said: “The ICC has a rule in place. When they reviewed a lot of old film footage they actually found that having that elbow bent at 15 degrees was actually pretty normal.
“That is what everyone was doing. Glenn McGrath had a slight bend in his elbow but up to 15 degrees, so he was not chucking.
“What I am really glad about is that they are enforcing it strictly and they are reviewing it.
“The ICC is being more vigilant and they are not saying that once you have cleared in 2009, you can’t be checked again.
“So they have got to keep monitoring it and watching it closely and if bowlers develop different kinds of deliveries, then why not have them checked?”