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Murali to sue
Bishen Singh Bedi
COLOMBO (Sri Lanka):
Sri Lanka’s ace off-spinner
Muttiah Muralitharan is contemplating legal action
against former Indian star spin bowler
Bishen Bedi for writing “degrading”
newspaper articles against him, his manager said Sunday.
“Bishen has always wrote very degrading articles
calling Murali a cheat and all that stuff,” Muralitharan’s manager Kushil
Gunasekera said. “We have taken serious note of those articles and sent them to
his lawyers.” Bedi, a former Indian captain, known for making controversial
statements, recently wrote in a leading sports magazine that
Muralitharan used
an illegal bowling action and that “cheating” is a “subcontinental trait,”
Gunasekera said. “This is a very unfair comment to make,” he added.
Muralitharan’s lawyer Dinal Phillips confirmed that he
has received instructions from the bowler. “We are just looking into the
articles, we have still not taken any decision,” Phillips said.
Muralitharan,
32, became Test cricket’s leading wicket taker last month with 527 dismissals.
He has had to defend his bowling action since he was called for throwing or
“chucking” in his 1995-96 tour of Australia. In cricket, a bowler cannot flick
his elbow while bowling.
However, the International Cricket Council cleared his
action later after it found that Muralitharan gave an illusion of throwing
because of an abnormality in his arm. The ICC recently banned Muralitharan’s
“doosra” delivery – a ball that spins away from a right handed batsman – after
Tests proved that the bowler bent his elbow more than the allowed limit.
Muralitharan has defended his “unorthodox” bowling action and said his doosra
will be recognized after the completion of some ICC researches on spin bowling.
Bedi, 57, was known as an accomplished left-arm spin bowler during his playing
years from 1966 to 1979. He played in 67 Test matches and captured 266 wickets. |
