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Glaring loopholes thrown up in Taskin Ahmed's suspension

Taskin Ahmed – a victim of miscarriage of justice?

Bangladesh’s World T20 campaign was dealt a shattering blow on Saturday with the suspension of two frontline bowlers Taskin Ahmed and Arafat Sunny for the rest of the tournament over illegality of bowling actions, but it now appears that Taskin’s suspension has several glaring legal loopholes.

Taskin was reported for a suspect action during the World T20 round-one match against Netherlands, but was allowed to play in the main round match against Pakistan, in which match he had figures of 2 for 32. He underwent an assessment in Chennai last week, and as a result of that test by an independent committee, has now been suspended from international cricket.

However, it has been revealed that there were severe flouting of guidelines in the testing session which doomed Taskin, and consequently, Bangladesh.

A Supreme Court lawyer in Bangladesh, Mustafizur Rahman Khan, has shared details of the rules flouted by the committee which suspended Taskin in a Facebook post. These details have been shared rampantly through all of Bangladesh, and there has been a storm of discontent brewing.

When contacted by Sportskeeda, Khan said, “I am a lawyer. I practice in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. I have acted on behalf of BCB in litigation, and have also advised them on issues. The post represents my advice to them upon a reading of the Match Officials' Report, the Assessment Report and the relevant ICC Regulations.”

Loopholes in Taskin’s testing session

Firstly, as pointed out, the committee suspended him on the basis of illegality of his bouncer but as seen from footage from the Netherlands match, Taskin had not bowled a single bouncer in that match. As such, the committee was overreaching its bounds on the duties assigned to it. There was no fault found with his other deliveries.

ICC Regulation 2.2.13 for the Review of Bowlers Reported with Suspected Illegal Bowling Actions clearly states, "where the Independent Assessment concludes that the Player employed an Illegal Bowling Action during the Independent Assessment in respect of a specific type of delivery only, other than his stock delivery, the Player will be allowed to continue bowling in International Cricket but subject to the warning that should he continue to bowl any of the specific type(s) of delivery for which he has been found to have an Illegal Bowling Action, he will run the risk of being cited a second time".

Taskin’s stock delivery, the good length delivery, could not be faulted by the committee, and so the harshest possible punishment that should have been given to him is a warning.

Secondly, Taskin was asked to bowl nine bouncers in three minutes, out of which only three were found to have been bowled with an illegal action. Bowling nine bouncers in such quick succession would not be required of him in a T20, and so the committee had been out of line in this regard as well.

As Khan contends, “Taskin had traveled a lot and went through preparation for and playing 3 international matches in a short period of time; it's natural that he was suffering from fatigue, and his technique on the odd delivery fell away when asked to bowl 9 bouncers in quick succession.”

Khan also questioned the match official’s report, on the ground of which Taskin’s action was subject to scrutiny. He said that the report had only stated a "concern about the legality of the bowling action", whereas regulations stipulate that the match official must detail which kind of delivery there is a specific problem with and the specific reason.

With Taskin unavailable for the rest of Bangladesh’s group matches, the Tigers’ hopes for qualifying for the semis is a fading dream. How will this latest injustice go down?

 

Generally, I do not give posts about my professional work, but since this issue concerns Taskin and the Tigers, I feel...

Posted by Mustafizur Rahman Khan on Saturday, March 19, 2016
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