Lloyd furious about Narine’s citations

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West Indies chief selector Clive Lloyd is outraged about spinner Sunil Narine being banned from bowling during the Champions League T20, saying there had been no prior issues about the spinner’s action.

With the ICC cracking down on illegal bowling actions in recent months, Narine was reported twice during the CLT20, and banned from bowling in the final for Kolkata. Since then, he has been withdrawn from the West Indies tour of India.

Lloyd said, before Narine had been withdrawn: “He has been bowling over the years with the same sort of action. Now all of a sudden it has changed. What has changed, I don’t know.

“You can’t just ban him from bowling just before an important tour like this and with the World Cup coming up. It destroys the individual’s ability as such and I think you may end up destroying someone’s career.

“This guy has been doing well playing for KKR for the last three years. If you look at his action, he has been doing pretty much the same and I want to know what is it that has been found that they ban him and not say something like, ‘Listen, you have a bit of a problem and you have to rectify it.’

“All of a sudden, this guy [Narine] who is supposed to be one of the best bowlers around – like Ajmal for that matter, how many Test wickets does Ajmal have? – and all of a sudden his bowling action is suspect.

“My point is something should be done before all this comes to this point. It can destroy a team. You want to know if this is being orchestrated because if you lose your main bowler then it puts some pressure on the selectors and the team and so on.”

Lloyd went on to say that the CLT20 organisers had not said much to the WICB about the matter, but he revealed that before the West Indies arrived in India, they had been warned by a source that Narine would be watched.

He said: “Nobody has told us anything. Nobody has written a letter. That is the thing about it. Something should be said to us. We are left high and dry. All of a sudden, the guy is not playing in a tournament he has played for the last three years.

“What are you then saying about the tournament then? Are you saying that the tournament has probably previously allowed people who have got bad actions to play?”

He added: “Before we came here we were told that they were going to call Narine, so it’s quite obvious that something must have been said somewhere.

“I really can’t tell you that [who it was] but I can tell you it’s a highly reliable source, because we have to make contingency plans for things like that just in case it happens.”

He added of the ICC’s lack of reaction, given they don’t run the CLT20: “I think it’s wrong the way they have gone about it and I have been involved in the ICC for years and I think you cannot just ban a guy just like that.

“This is a guy who has played for us all over the world, not only in the West Indies. All of a sudden, this guy has got a suspect action. I am not happy, I would like to strongly say that.”

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