What if cricket had a graveyard? What would be some of the tactics, ideas, and rules interred there? What would be some of the techniques and approaches that were no longer useful and had been left behind in some quiet field, never to be revisited again?

For sure there’d be a tombstone for the bodyline technique. Devised to quell the relentless run-making of Australian Don Bradman, it had an eventful but brief existence before being discouraged as a tactic and made redundant by the passage of laws limiting field placements and intimidatory bowling. And though we have seen frightful, short-pitched bowling over the years, bodyline, as it was conceived prior to England’s 1932-33 tour of Australia, was excised from the game.

The back-foot no-ball rule would have a spot there as well. Laid to rest in 1962, chances of it being resurrected are slim, despite the best efforts of the likes of Bradman and Richie Benaud, while they were still with us, and Ian Chappell.

There should be, in this mythical mausoleum, a headstone reserved for the leg-bye law. It is one of the game’s most ludicrous regulations. What could be the justification for penalising the bowler and the fielding side for scoring a moral victory over the batter by striking his person while he attempted to play a shot or tried to take evasive action. It is unfair, and law 26, the portion that deals with leg-byes, should be repealed.

Perhaps the nightwatchman tactic should be lying there as well. Why was it ever a good idea to send in the tail-ender to protect the recognised batter with close-of-play approaching? With opposition bowlers going full tilt, knowing they’ll be putting their feet up soon, who is more likely to survive, the tail-ender or the top order batter?

There is one story I heard that goes something like this: Lawrence Rowe was in his heyday and playing a game for Jamaica – or the West Indies, I forget which – when he got out late one evening, as the light faded, close to stumps. His captain, in seeking to protect the top order player who was supposed to follow Rowe, asked a tail-ender to go in as nightwatchman. “Well skip,” he retorted, “if the greatest batsman in the world can’t see it, then how am I going to see it?”

So now we come to the last lifeless body entombed there: the doosra. The “other one”, as it’s called, is the ball from the off-spinner that turns from leg to off. The argument made by several experts, including Bishen Bedi and Michael Holding, that it’s extremely difficult, impossible even, to bowl the delivery with an authentic action seem to have a measure of truth to it.

Scrutiny of bowling actions by the International Cricket Council (ICC) around a decade ago led to the demise of the doosra in international cricket. And currently there is not a single bowler who has the delivery as a part of their repertoire.

The doosra came into vogue almost three decades ago with the emergence of Pakistan off-spinner, Saqlain Mushtaq. Mushtaq is always listed as its inventor, though there are those who say it was in use much earlier. At the very least, he was the bowler who popularised the delivery, the first to bowl it consistently, and the seed he planted grew to the point that it was felt in many circles that off-spinners had to have a bit of mystery about them to be effective at the highest level. In other words, they needed to bowl the doosra.

In his autobiography, Playing With Fire, former England Captain Nasser Hussain, in discussing the diminishing effectiveness of spinner Phil Tufnell offered this opinion: “The reason [for Tufnell’s lack of potency] was that spin bowling had moved on. Mystery spinners like [Muttiah] Muralitharan and Mushtaq were spinning it both ways, and orthodox spinners were under pressure as rarely before.”

Some of the doosra’s main practitioners over the years, Muralitharan, Harbajan Singh, Saeed Ajmal, and Sunil Narine were counted amongst the game’s most effective slow bowlers. Muralitharan, for example, often referred to as the best slow bowler in history, has 800 Test wickets in 133 matches, including a staggering 67 five-wicket hauls. Harbhajan took 417 wickets in 103 Tests, and while Ajmal only has 178 wickets, he played in just 35 Tests. Narine played only six Test matches, but he has long been one of the Twenty20 (T20) game’s most successful bowlers.

But their bowling actions attracted incessant controversy. All four were subjected to whispers throughout their careers from opponents and onlookers who found their techniques questionable. All were forced by the authorities to undergo tests to verify the legitimacy of their bowling actions.

The flurry of activity by the ICC resulted in a few bowlers being banned. Ajmal, Shane Shillingford, Sunil Narine, Sachithra Senanayake, among others, were all prevented from bowling for a period. Remedial work to reconstruct their actions and further testing allowed them to return to the fold, but in most cases their revised techniques rendered them less potent.

Ajmal, upon his return to regular action, was no longer the spin-bowling demon he was before. And Shillingford, for a while the West Indies’ most penetrative bowler, soon lost his place as he adjusted to life without the doosra.

Efforts to have bowlers adhere to the rules governing bowling actions are undoubtedly good for the game. Rules are rules and should be followed by all. The extra flex in the elbow that some bowlers got away with for a while was unfair to batters who had to face them and to the bowlers who operate within the confines of the law.

What is the redress available to the batter who fails to pick a doosra delivered from an elbow flexed beyond the allowable 15 per cent and is dismissed? And why would a bowler be happy to see a colleague gain an unfair advantage by contravening the rules.

Batters sleep slightly more comfortably now that this troublesome delivery is no longer a part of the sport.

Saqlain first played for Pakistan in 1995, which means the doosra’s had a relatively brief life. While it lived, however, it helped a number of finger spinners to prosper. And with bat dominating ball in this era of T20 cricket, many will see it as unfortunate that the doosra has died such an untimely death.

Garfield Robinson is a Jamaican living in the US who writes on cricket for a few Indian and English publications. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or garfield.v.robinson@gmail.com.