Shame on the Jamaica Cricket Association
commentary by DUANE COOMBSSo the ICC have finally got around to suspending Marlon Samuels from bowling in international cricket. I have one question: what took them so long?
The news that Marlon Samuels was suspended from bowling in international cricket by the ICC could hardly have come as a surprise to anyone who has followed West Indies cricket for any time. For this, I charge the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) with malpractice. To those of us who follow West Indies cricket, either in person or in the warren of sports bars, basements and clubs in the diaspora, Marlon Samuels' action has long been obviously illegal and a source of embarrassed laughter to many of us.
His flinging was that blatant!
Whether we call it chucking, pelting or flinging, Samuels' action would have been deemed illegal even in the impromptu game of "ketchy shuby" -- where just about anything goes -- much less in international cricket where the unforgiving eyes of the cameras are trained on him.
If rank amateurs in the crowd could have detected this from this distance, how could the JCA not have known?
Marlon Samuels and Jermaine Lawson, the other West Indies bowler of recent vintage to have been suspended by the ICC, are linked by one common thread -- they represent Jamaica and play in competitions administered by the Jamaica Cricket Association.
Now with Marlon Samuels' bowling action being called into question by the ICC, one can only hope that the JCA will finally be spurred into action -- either by embarrassment or real concern for Jamaica and West Indies cricket -- to finally do something about the number of blatant flingers who have represented the country in recent season
These include (just to name the most obvious) Jermaine Lawson, Marlon Samuels and Andre Russell.
I realise that some will try to defend the indefensible -- either out of a sense of reflexive, misguided nationalism or just plain idiocy -- by pointing out that other bowlers are just as culpable but that would be missing the point by a mile.
These blinkered buffoons care not for the players, nor Jamaica and West Indies cricket. Hollow, jingoistic chest-thumping seems the only way they can garner some attention for themselves hence I have no time for them!
We could have been spared this embarrassment if the powers that be had done something about these flingers a long time ago. It is not as if the unvarnished chucking was not immediately obvious to those of us who even bother to watch cricket in Jamaica.
With any justice, Samuels, Lawson and Russell will never again be allowed to deliver -- and I use that word deliberately -- another ball, at any level of cricket, until they learn to bowl.
Of the three Russell has yet to play international cricket so the Jamaica Cricket Board still has time to do the right thing and spare us another national and regional embarrassment.
Shame on the Jamaica Cricket Association and WICB!