If a spinner keeps chucking the ball wide of leg an umpire will eventually call him for wide. At the adelaide test in 06 shane warne was told to stop bowling outside leg to slow englands run rate down.
The west indies were boring when they would bowl 60 overs in a day to draw tests matches on the rare occasion they needed to. They are the reason minimum over rate laws were brought in.
I am beginning to suspect that you are just talking crap for the sake of talking. You're not even arguing anything on point anymore.
My understanding is that an umpire can only call a wide, if the ball is in fact a wide pursuant to the wide rules.
I cannot comment on your recollection of the Shane Warne Adelaide 06 because I'd need to know what rule that the umpire thought he was infringing. But there is nothing in cricinfo ball by ball commentary to suggest that the umpires told he could not bowl defensively to leg stump.
Over 118:
Warne continues. "Warne bowled this 'round the wicket crap to Kemp in Perth last year, wasting over after over. That match was the only draw in the series of 12 which Australia won after losing the Ashes. I was there, it was crappy bowling then and it is still crappy bowling. I don't know why Ponting is letting it go on if Pietersen is clearly not going to rise to the bait (like Kemp didn't)."
126 over
"This is a gutless way of playing cricket," says Michael Atherton but Nasser Hussain disagrees. Well, he would, as anyone who recalls his use of Ashley Giles against Sachin Tendulkar will verify
In fairness to Warne, he hardly looks thrilled at bowling this stuff to Pietersen...
"I think I'd rather give out bed pans all night than watch this," moans Jamie, a student nurse on a night shift back in Britain. Not sure it's that bad.
""It will be interesting to see how the Australian media reports this," says Atherton. "Because they are so one-eyed." Emails to Atherton not us , please!"
""Boring," chant the crowd
"This cricket has all the excitement of a bowl of cold tofu," observed Curly from Japan. "Why not give Gilchrist a bowl? Japanese TV is more interesting than this.""
Over 148
It'll be Warne now from the Cathedral End, persisting with that leg-side line as he prepares to bowl round the wicket. Pietersen bending his knees, limbering up
"Warne snatches his wide-brim hat off the umpire, frustrated, and walks off muttering some choice language to himself"
I'm skimming, but I cannot see any warning by the umpires to Warne for this economy rate tactic. Analysts and cricket fans may not think much of it and it seems quite a defensive strategy that is dull entertainment. But it appears to have been within the rules.
Bowling leg breaks pitching outside leg and turning into the batsmen are hardly wides. The batsman probably padded many of them away. Bowling what would be ODI wides in test cricket has always been a legitimate way to slow down the economy rate in test cricket. A seamer can bowl at 11th off stump if you want as long as its within the crease lines to achieve the same thing.
The umpires are authorised to intervene in cases of:
Time wasting
Damaging the pitch
Dangerous or unfair bowling
Tampering with the ball
Any other action that they consider to be unfair
There is nothing unfair about not giving away runs and bowling a wide of off stump or leg stump strategy to be economical. Boring for the viewer if the batsman is disciplined, but why unfair?
I do not disagree that the 80's West Indies was a leading force to the minimum over rate, but it had nothing to do with them seeking draws. That was more England and all other teams and was quite common already in the 1950s and 1960s. It was no balls and playing 4 fast seamers with no all rounder, at last until Carl Hooper, if you think of him as a test all rounder. Mix that in with all the no balls and some wides bowled -
the Windies by bowling less overs kept their 4 main bowlers bowling more economical overs, limiting the amount of freebie overs from Viv Richards and co. It also kept the 4 main bowlers fresh and bowling fast, because they were not bowling 22 and 23 overs in a day.
The Windies got away with it for so long because not many innings against their attack would last a day, let alone a match going without a result being possible within 5 days but for rain given their aggressive batting and bowling. The West Indies were not dour and defensive as a starting point like many other teams of the era were. It may well have become a defensive ploy when it was Merv Dillion bowling and not Roberts, Holding, Croft, and Garner with Marshall as 12th man. But that I'm not talking about their fall from grace. I'm talking the the great Windies teams. And as I said, time wasting for draws was already well established, and continues to this very day. As you said it was "rare" that they needed to, I doubt the rule change was brought in to stop a "rare" problem with the West Indian team.
All these bowlers were greats, able to deliver the ball at speeds in excess of 90 mph. Teams have always had fast bowlers but never has a country been blessed by having so many at the same time. Therefore, under successive captains Clive Lloyd and Vivian Richards, the West Indies would deploy four fast bowlers who would take turns frightening the living daylights out of the batsmen. You may think nothing is wrong with this, but ex-players and cricketing authorities around the globe had a different outlook.
The West Indies’ fast bowlers used to take forever to bowl their overs – often they would struggle to bowl more than 11 or 12 an hour. Many people considered these slow over rates to be boring. What’s more, batting teams found it incredibly difficult to score runs due to the pace of the deliveries, regularly struggling to score 200 runs in a day’s play. Some players also felt that the bowling often targeted the batsman’s body, amounting in effect to intimidation.
For many cricket lovers the period of West Indian dominance was one long yawn. Even the West Indies’ fans annoyed the cricket establishment in England, blowing horns and beating drums as they watched their heroes triumph. In fact, whenever the West Indies’ cricket team toured England in the 1970s and 1980s the letters pages of the national newspapers would be chock-full of missives from retired colonels ordering umpires to get tough over slow over rates and intimidatory bowling.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/10-great-cricket-controversies.html
It could be argued that once Roberts, Holding, Garner, Croft and Daniel had been replaced by Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh, Bishop and Patterson and a whole squad had been banned for touring South Africa of the likes of Sylvester Clarke and Franklyn Stevenson, the cricket world was quite concerned about the endless intimidation and success by the West Indian cricket team and knee jerked rule changes like one bouncer per over rule in 1991. Seems they need not have been so concerned after all. Oh and for the record, Dickie Bird thought that the one bouncer per over rule was stupid, and that umpires should determine what is intimidating bowling.
