Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

108 The Creation of Watney Mann debar the bowler from the use of the wrist in delivering the ball.’ At the next International Cricket Conference in July 1966, all countries accepted this definition for an experimental period of twelve months during 1967. But Australia were still not happy and argued for the introduction of a preamble emphasising the basis of the existing Law which made it clear that umpires should always be satisfied that the ball had been bowled. To meet this view the ICC agreed to introduce the definition with the preamble: ‘Umpires must be satisfied beyond all doubt that the ball is bowled. If they are satisfied no other question arises.’ The definition that had been agreed then followed, plus the explanation, ‘sent out as a guide to umpires’. There were no changes after the trial year of 1967 and the new wording became law in due course. The work of George and his sub-committee was done but the problem never went away and over the years some bowlers were driven out of the game. MCC began to study revisions of the Code in 1974 and an entire new code of the Law was approved in November 1979. Advanced tests conducted in the 1990s revealed that during a delivery almost every bowler straightened and extended the arm naturally to some degree and a Law which banned any flexing of the arm was difficult to implement. A fixed set of tiered tolerance was agreed for some elbow extension: a new code, rewritten for the new millennium, came into effect at the end of the 2000 season, replacing that of 1980. Perhaps if George had been able to enjoy the benefit of more advanced scientific research thirty years earlier, his committee would have come much closer to clarifying what constituted an illegal bowling action.