ICC’s treatment of Virat Kohli, Matt Kuhnemann, highlights hypocrisy

A fringe Australian spinner is fighting for his career while Virat Kohli escaped with a slap on the wrist for shoulder charging a rival player. The difference in treatment, as BEN HORNE writes, highlights the ICC’s hypocrisy.

Is there any danger the International Cricket Council might ever aim up on the big names and not the battlers made good?

Indian superstar Virat Kohli shoulder charged 19-year-old kid Sam Konstas in the middle of the MCG on Boxing Day and was hit with one of the softest sanctions of all time, yet match officials in Sri Lanka were happy to make an example out of a five-Test orthodox spinner over a marginal bowling action.

Yes, of course they are completely different situations that don’t even belong in the same conversation other than the all too familiar running theme that the game’s governing body is sport’s biggest toothless tiger … until an easy target presents itself.

Former Test captain and outstanding radio commentator Tim Paine echoed this sentiment, held by many in the Australian game, on his SEN breakfast show on Friday, when he asked; why Matt Kuhnemann?

Matthew Kuhnemann faces an anxious wait to clear his name. Picture: AFP

“If you go back through the history of cricket there has been a hell of a lot worse bowling actions than Matt Kuhnemann and I feel for him I really do,” Paine said.

“If he was one of the great bowlers of the game, there is no chance, given history and what we’ve seen with spin in particular, there’s not a hope in hell he would have been cited. No way possible.

“I just don’t get it. Go back through the history of cricket. We’ve had guys who have played hundreds of Test matches combined who (had actions) so much worse than Matt Kuhnemann.

“I feel like it’s a bit of a token, ‘we’ll look like we’re policing this, even though we have never before,’ and Kuhnemann has been the unlucky one.”

According to Paine, there’s not a huge difference between the flexion in Kuhnemann’s action compared to the freakish hyperextension unique to Indian maestro Jasprit Bumrah, which is almost universally considered to be completely legal.

How would the umpires in Sri Lanka have tackled the situation if Kuhnemann was a 28-year-old up-and-coming bowler with the might of the Indian cricket board behind him?

Australia were staggered during the summer when Kohli got off with a nominal match fee fine in Melbourne for physically intimidating a teenage opponent, before a Test later Bumrah and most of the Indian team went ballistic at him at the SCG without even a word from the officials.

Kuhnemann is said to be completely shocked and devastated at being reported, having never had a single red flag raised during his eight-year domestic career for Queensland, Tasmania and the Brisbane Heat.

Matthew Kuhnemann ripped through Sri Lanka in the two-Test series. Picture: AFP

The Australian system may have a case to answer on that front for not taking a pro-active approach and testing him earlier in his career, but that doesn’t lessen the shock or the magnitude of the call the ICC has made.

Australia’s Test and ODI captain in Sri Lanka, Steve Smith has thrown his support behind Kuhnemann and is adamant his spinner will pass testing in Brisbane and clear his name.

“It’s come as a bit of a surprise to me,“ Smith said.

Matthew Kuhnemann will have his bowling action tested. Picture: Getty Images

“He has been playing for eight years in professional cricket and nothing has been said in that amount of time.

“I am thinking of him. At present, he has to go through the process.

“We’re confident he will pass. He will go through that process back home. We wish him all the best.”

But as Kuhnemann’s Brisbane Heat coach Johan Botha articulated rather sombrely this week, the injustice of bowling action queries is that the mud sticks even if the bowler clears his name.

That is now Kuhnemann’s cross to bear, and one can only wonder whether he would have been put under this sort of spotlight if he was a bigger name.

Originally published as ICC’s treatment of Virat Kohli, Matt Kuhnemann, highlights hypocrisy