On Sri Lankan cricket test win -The pearl and the bank clerk

Jarrod Kimber in Cricinfo

Sri Lanka's GDP ranking in 2013 was 112, the UK were 21. They have a very small population compared to the other subcontinent cricket nations. Transparency International ranks them as the 91st least-corrupt nation on earth. They have only one really big modern city. Their cricket is mismanaged by selfish inept politicians. The team is signed off by the government. They don't always pay their cricketers.

But this year they have beaten the world. And now they've beaten England with men who have lost their houses in tsunamis, been shot at by terrorists, competition winners and a tubby man who works at a bank.

Sri Lanka is a special place.

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At the Sampath Bank headquarters in Colombo there is a round-faced man smiling happily wearing a polo shirt with the bank's logo on it. He is being felicitated. He is a finger-spinning maestro. He is a World T20 winner. And this man, Rangana Herath, is also an employee at the bank.

Not in a ceremonial way. Not just to beef up their cricket team. But Herath works at the bank. Doing things that people do in banks. He probably has his own coffee mug there. When Herath sees the Sri Lanka cricket schedule, one of his first calls is to his bank manager. To ask for leave to travel to the tour.

Herath worked there when he made his comeback to Test cricket in 2009. Herath worked there this while he took more Test wickets than any other bowler in 2012. Herath worked there even while he was ranked the second-best Test bowler on earth.

Twenty-four days before his felicitation, Herath took 1-23 in four overs. Sri Lanka won the World T20 that day.

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Sri Lanka Cricket is currently in debt. An exact amount is unknown. It was at one stage supposed to be US$70m. That is to pay for new stadiums that replaced the old stadiums that were in some cases not that old. This led them to not pay their players.

According to Forbes, MS Dhoni was worth US$30m last year. He captained the side that Sri Lanka beat in the World T20 final. In sport, money does buy wins. Internationally, less so. But Sri Lanka are playing cricket off the field in a way that the other countries haven't done for decades. Their support staff is understaffed, undertrained, and at times seemingly not able to do their own research. They rely on the touring journalists for a lot that cricket board staff would usually do. They are comically unprofessional.

This is the first Test series that Sri Lanka had sent players over early to properly acclimatise before the tour. Herath and Shaminda Eranga both came over. It was a step towards professionalism in a sport that has been professional for years.

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North of Colombo there is a town called Chilaw. There is an ancient Hindu temple in Chilaw that was once visited by Gandhi. Every year they have the Munneswaram festival. It was once famous for pearls. And they have a first-class cricket team the Chilaw Marians Cricket Club.

Shaminda Eranga comes from Chilaw.

Like many in Sri Lanka, the cricketers from Chilaw are largely invisible inside the system. There are Test-quality cricketers playing on the streets of the Hikkaduwa right now that will never play with a hard cricket ball in their life.

Eranga was not playing first-class cricket. He was not in the system. He shouldn't have made it at all. But like his seam-bowling partner Nuwan Pradeep, he made his way to a fast-bowling competition. He bowled fast. But five guys bowled faster. Somehow the sixth-fastest bowler in that completion was picked for Chilaw Marians Cricket Club. Five years later he would clean bowl Brad Haddin with his second ball in international cricket.

Eranga is the closest thing Chilaw has produced to a pearl in a very long time.

	Sri Lanka played gritty, tough, bits-and-pieces cricket that mostly was just keeping them in touch of England, nothing more. They just refused to be beaten. They just refused to go away

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Herath has been in Test cricket since 1999. He invented a carom ball. He disappeared back into first-class cricket and the bank, and was in club cricket in England when he was picked for his comeback.

There are no billboards in Sri Lanka with his face on them. He's not famous like Kumar, Mahela, Lasith or Angelo. Even Ajantha Mendis is sponsored by chicken sausages. Herath may be a Test bowler with over 200 wickets who has carried a poor attack for years, but he's just a really good player, not a star or legend.

Against Stuart Broad, Herath had bowled around the wicket with a low arm action. Broad takes a big step forward when he defends spinners. Herath bowled the ball exactly from the right angle, with the right amount of turn, to ensure that Broad would miss one.

Against James Anderson, he bowled over the wicket with a high arm action. Anderson gets right over the ball when it's full, and can dangle his bat when it's slightly shorter. Herath was trying to find either of these two dismissals.

Broad missed his, Anderson survived.

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Eranga spent most of the first innings not getting anywhere. There was some swing, but not enough. He bowled a great line and length to Sam Robson, but couldn't get the edge. England just moved further and further away with the game. Even the second new ball did nothing for him. Sri Lanka were all but gone. But then they got the wicket of Ian Bell. It was Eranga's wicket. He added Moeen Ali's wicket to it. The next morning he had Chris Jordan and Anderson as well. They were still behind, but they were within some kind of touch.

In the second innings, Eranga bowled the worst he had in the series. At Lord's he was the pick of the bowling, in the first innings at Headingley he inspired the comeback. But when his team really needed him to help win the game in this innings, he couldn't get it right. He lost his line and length. He didn't make people play. He was too short. The only time he looked good was when he just tried to knock Joe Root's mouth off. That didn't work either. Then when he took a wicket, that of Jordan, he also overstepped.

Eranga's first 23.4 overs were just not great.

It was probably mostly luck that he received the last over. Dhammika Prasad had bowled the second last over. Herath could not outfox Anderson. Pradeep looked spent. And Angelo Mathews had lost his first innings magic.

Eranga was just the man who was left.

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Sri Lanka feel like they don't get the credit they deserve. They feel that when they win, it is Yuvraj's (or whoever else that game) fault. Or the home conditions helped them. Or the other team was just useless. On Monday at Headingley, they started one of the great comebacks in modern Test cricket. Their captain played one of the great knocks of modern Test cricket. They were on the verge of their first ever series win in England. Their first major series win outside Asia for almost 20 years.

And the next day the cricket world talked about the other captain who had a shocker.

Before the tour they lost their coach to the opposition. While here they have been accused of breaking the spirit of cricket. Their spinner was accused of breaking the laws of cricket. Their bowlers were pop gun and a glorified county attack. Their batmen were suspect against the moving and short ball. They would be bombed by the short ball. They were sent in to be annihilated here. They felt under siege.

At Lord's it got even worse when Broad and Anderson attacked them with the ball, and the English players, lead by the extremely mouthy Root, came at them very hard. Pradeep was almost beheaded. After that they were upset by Cook's comments about Sachithra Senanayake's action. And England had dominated them for eight straight days of cricket.

They were sick and tired of being plucky cheerful losers. They wanted a win. They saw one. And they became very vocal. Root's ears will be ringing from his entire innings. Broad's unscheduled toilet break 20 minutes into his innings probably got more of the same.

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	The decisive moment, James Anderson's 55th ball faced © Getty Images  Enlarge

This is not the strongest team Sri Lanka have brought to England. They've had Murali, Dilshan, Jayasuriya and Vaas to bring before. This team has two all-time greats, one potential great, and the second-best spinner they have ever had.

It also has Nuwan Pradeep and his bowling average of 72.78. It has Dimuth Karunaratne, who is immune to going out early, or making runs from his starts. Lahiru Thirimanne, who stopped believing runs existed. And Prasanna Jayawardene, who looked a spent force with bat and gloves.

Mahela Jayawardene never made a hundred. Herath never took a five-for. Nuwan Kulasekera was dropped after the first Test. But people kept stepping up. They had batted an entire fifth day to save an overseas Test only once before. But they all chipped in and did it with one of the worst batsmen in world cricket somehow surviving. Their bowling could never compete with England's, so their fielders took many more of their chances. Their middle order slipped up in the third innings at Headingley, so their tail made runs.

It was gritty, tough, bits-and-pieces cricket that mostly was just keeping them in touch of England, nothing more. They just refused to be beaten. They just refused to go away. They didn't smile, or play nice. They clawed and screamed.

On paper this Sri Lanka should never beat England. They should have been outgunned in almost every way. In preparation. Financial. Backroom. Coaching. Facilities. And even in the players who were involved. Virtually every single thing about England should have been better than Sri Lanka.

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Anderson was playing for England by the time he was 21. He's the embodiment of a professional cricketer. You can see his face on the back of buses in London. He has won games with the ball all round the world. He's saved games with the bat. Today he faced 54 balls with the knowledge that any mistake and his team would lose a Test, a series, become a joke. Yet he played almost every ball well. Stoically. Until Sri Lanka very nearly gave up.

On the 55th ball, a world-class professional sportsman was bounced by the sixth-fastest bowler from the North Western Province and caught by a chubby slow guy from Kurunegala.

The pearl and the bank clerk. Sri Lanka is a special place.

The incredibly malleable spirit of cricket

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

	Ian Bell was out in the Trent Bridge Test against India in 2011... until he wasn't © PA Photos  Enlarge

Two British satirists, the late John Fortune and John Bird, mastered the art of explaining slippery subjects through humour. They would take a major news story and apparently merely knock it about in a light, spontaneous chat on TV. But their mischievous dialogues often took us closer to the heart of the matter than acres of self-important newsprint. (Here they are in a famous sketch from 2007 about the financial crisis)

How I would have loved them to address cricket's confusion about the "spirit of cricket". The old controversy was reignited this month when Sri Lanka "Mankaded" Jos Buttler. In the spirit of admiration rather than emulation, in this piece I imagine a conversation between the two great satirists, reflecting on Mankading and cricket's odd attitudes towards morality...

"So what is it, this spirit of cricket thing? Presumably it's about behaving with dignity out on the pitch and that kind of stuff?"

"Oh no, not really. Most players can get away with swearing at each other non-stop for five days without contravening the spirit of cricket. We don't get involved morally at that level. Better to turn a blind eye."

"You mean sledging - that's the right term isn't it? - does not contravene the spirit of cricket?"

"Not really. No, cricket tends to celebrate verbal abuse as "banter", even though it's very rarely funny. Let's put it this way. If someone sledges you all day in a Test match, the correct response in modern cricket is to go up to him at the end of play and say, "I loved the way you showed real passion about playing for your country, you seem like a champion cricketer, can I buy you a drink, as I'm sure you're a great bloke off the pitch."

"So the appropriate response to someone calling you a "f****** ****" for seven hours is to say, 'Thanks, can I buy you a beer?'"

"Exactly."

"Now I'm confused. So abusing someone who is simply doing his job is fine. But when an opponent performs a run-out, entirely within the laws of the game, he has broken the spirit of cricket, and the crowd starts booing and the whole occasion is apparently demeaned?"

"You are beginning to understand how the phrase "spirit of cricket" can be thrown around."

"But what could Sri Lanka have done to avoid the Mankading? Other than the threat of a Mankad, there's no other way of preventing a batsman setting off for a run from an advanced position is there?"

"Not really."

"And I suppose, in the heat of battle in elite sport, no one offers warnings before acting within the laws, do they?"

"Well, actually Sri Lanka offered two warnings."

"So they offered two warnings to an opponent who was - deliberately or, in this instance, accidentally - gaining an illegal advantage, and yet they still broke the spirit of cricket?"

"According to lots of people, yes."

	Everything up to and including my actions are "within the spirit of cricket". Anything I don't like about the actions of other players is "against the spirit of cricket"

"So if acting within the laws is against the spirit of cricket, what does upholding the spirit of cricket look like?"

"It's about not taking advantage of the fact that a man can lose his mind immediately before eating a slice of cake."

"I'm sorry, you've lost me."

"Back in 2011, poor Ian Bell offered a plea of temporary insanity brought about by the immediate temptation of a slice of cake. The 'spirit of cricket' jury gave him a reprieve, effectively a second life as a batsman."

"You're joking, right?"

"Deadly serious. Ian Bell made a brilliant hundred at Trent Bridge against India. But after the last ball before tea, he lapsed in concentration and assumed that the ball had crossed the boundary when in fact it hadn't. As he sauntered off for tea, the Indian team dislodged the bails, and Bell was run out. That is indeed out, according to the laws. But after an English delegation went to the Indian dressing room to complain, India retracted their appeal.

"That is, they invited Bell to bat again. Not because he wasn't out, but because they now realised that the prospect of tea had clearly clouded Bell's mind. Pundits agreed that everyone had behaved superbly. After all, how could a man be expected to remember the laws of the game when he can already sniff the aroma of chocolate cake in his nostrils?"

"This spirit of cricket is incredibly complex and malleable, isn't it? It looks as though you can explain or condemn almost anything using the rhetoric of the spirit of cricket."

"Exactly. That's the magic of it. It's all about not crossing a line."

"Whose line?"

"My line."

"What do you mean your line?"

"Everything up to and including my actions are 'within the spirit of cricket'. Anything I don't like about the actions of other players is 'against the spirit of cricket'."

"So it's possible for two people to argue for hours about someone 'crossing the line' without anyone knowing what or where the line is?"

"Exactly. That's the brilliance of the idea."

"Let's go back to the Mankading controversy. Wasn't there some background controversy about the bowling action of Senanayake, the bowler who performed the Mankading?"

"Senanayake's action has been reported as suspicious by several officials - i.e. it may be deemed a throw rather than a bowl. He will have to go to Cardiff to have his action specially filmed and analysed to see if it is legal after all."

"But isn't there a risk, when spin bowlers have to attend special testing, that they will simply bowl with a slightly different and 'more legal' action during the forensic examination?"

"What do you mean 'risk'? Basically, almost everyone who is tested eventually gets cleared. Think of the whole thing as a cooling off process."

"But what about the bowlers who don't have questionable actions? Aren't they placed at an unfair disadvantage by having to bowl in the traditional manner?"

"What do you think this is, a charity? This is cut-throat, elite sport. There is no room for sentimentality."

"Except the spirit of cricket?"

"Except for that, of course."

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The Economist on Mankading

THERE was a controversial incident during England’s one day international (ODI) against Sri Lanka at Edgbaston last night. Sachithra Senanayake, a Sri Lankan bowler, ran out Jos Buttler, England’s best ODI batsman on current form, while he was backing up (pictured). In other words, as Mr Senanayake ran in to bowl, Mr Buttler wandered down the wicket to make it easier to complete a quick run. Having spotted this (and apparently having already warned Mr Buttler twice), Mr Senanayake stopped in his delivery stride, removed the bails and appealed for the run-out. Despite having the opportunity to withdraw the appeal, Angelo Mathews, Sri Lanka's captain, backed his bowler and Mr Buttler was given out.

“Mankading”, as it is known, named after Vinoo Mankad, an early proponent of the art, highlights an interesting divide. By and large it is frowned upon by professional players. Alastair Cook, England’s captain, described the incident as “a pretty poor act”, adding, apparently without irony, “there is a line and I think that line was crossed tonight.” Backing up as the bowler approaches, pros argue, has long been an accepted part of the game. As with many de facto sporting rules (which might also include footballers returning the ball to the opposition when a player is injured or the "neighbourhood play" in baseball, in which umpires will call a runner out so long as the fielder's foot is in the general vicinity of the bag) a team allows opposing batsmen to get away with it because they expect to be granted the same courtesy themselves. In this sense, they are entitled to be angry when the unwritten code is breached. Certainly, Mr Matthews could have few complaints were he now to be run-out in a similar fashion. Indeed, it is classic game theory on his part: weighing up the short-term benefit of disrupting a stable equilibrium against the long-term consequences of retaliation in kind.

But judging by others’ reaction to the incident, non-professionals (including your correspondent) see nothing wrong with Mankading. Stealing a few yards before the bowler has released the ball is gaining an unfair advantage. Put-upon bowlers, who have watched as the game has been skewed further and further in favour of batsmen, have every right to call them out on it. What is more, their right to do so is enshrined in the laws of the game, which state: "The bowler is permitted, before releasing the ball and provided he has not completed his usual delivery swing, to attempt to run out the non-striker."

Nonetheless, abiding by rules is not the same as acting in a right-minded way. Thepreamble to the laws of the game say cricket "should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game". But who are the guardians of ethical norms in sport? It increasingly seems as if the principles of professional players are accepted, de facto, as correct. And they have judged that Mankading is not permissible but, for example, appealing for an LBW decision when the bowler knows the ball to be missing the stumps is. It is the same in other sports. In football, pundits talk, in pseudo-moralistic terms, about strikers having “every right to go down” when they sense the merest contact from an opponent in the penalty box. The moral imperative, they seem to argue, lies with the defender not to touch the attacker, rather than on the attacker not to play-act.

It is perhaps inevitable that professionals should become sport's moral arbiters. After all, their conduct is watched by millions every match. This has the effect of normalising their behaviour. What is more, when public judgment is required it is undertaken by ex-professionals on sports programmes, who tend to share their sensibilities. In their defence, there is also perhaps a case that professionals, paid to eke out every advantage, are more aware of where sport’s pressure points lie, and so are the best judges of what constitutes a crossing of the moral line. But either way, eventually that relentless professional viewpoint is bound to dominate everyone else’s thinking.

There might be an argument for moral relativism; that given the pressures they face, professionals should play to different standards than the rest. But this, it seems, is just a way of saying that professionals’ conduct can be less ethical than others’. And there is a difference between what has become accepted and what is right. In an ideal world, it would be the amateurs who would have the right to decide what is morally acceptable on the sport’s field; the enthusiasts that ruled as philosopher kings above the self-interested professionals. Having played Sunday cricket for many years, your correspondent suspects that those who most cherish cricket’s spirit are to be found on the village green, not the county square. If they say Mankading is moral, who are the pros to disagree?

Cricket - There's more grey to chucking than we might think

Osman Samiuddin in Cricinfo

A decade ago cricket's ancient and embedded hyper-morality crashed into the modern world's burgeoning thirst for reality television. The focus for this communion was Muttiah Muralitharan, and more specifically his action. Two TV networks, ESPN (in India) and the UK's Channel 4, broadcast what were paraded at the time as definitive acquittals of Muralitharan's action, which had till then been called periodically, sanctioned occasionally, and the subject of hysterical debate permanently.

------ALSO READ

I feel for Sachitra Senanayake

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Muralitharan went through his repertoire of deliveries with a steel-embedded plaster brace around his right arm, from bicep to wrist, and with admirable good nature. He looked a little uneasy in the ESPN show, a little too much like the guinea pig just becoming aware of his centrality to bigger, buffeting winds. But he went about it like a man who felt he needed to.

He bowled to Michael Slater in that one, to recreate match conditions. There was a doctor present too, explaining the unique physical quirks of Muralitharan's wrist, arm and shoulder, though he felt a little like Dr Nick Riviera, whose only residency of note has been on The Simpsons. Ravi Shastri, for ESPN, was quadruply burdened, as host, judge, jury and, eventually, the benefactor who cleared Murali. Shastri did so in the manner with which we are all familiar, effectively hype-mastering a science documentary. For Channel 4, Mark Nicholas managed a sombre posture, considered and inquiring but above all providing a kind of bipartisan seal on matters.

The issue by then had become so divided along racial lines that a non-Asian clearing of Murali felt necessary. That was the ultimate takeaway, of course, that Murali did not chuck. He could not with that steel brace on. Even Slats, an Aussie, said so.

In hindsight it is not so much the details of Murali's case that were important as was the fact that cricket felt the need for this public trial by TV in the first place. Even today, viewing it produces the kind of cringe only a certain kind of reality show does; especially the eagerness with which Muralitharan is cleared, as if he was guilty of some crime.

Though he looks uncomfortable in the ESPN version, Murali looked cheery and eager for Channel 4. He was probably a willing participant, perhaps even an instigator in doing the shows, but that is hardly the point. He was compelled into it by cricket, feeling no other recourse was available to prove that he was not some evil, cheating villain who would leave cricket forever corrupted. That is precisely what umpires such as Ross Emerson and Darrell Hair seemed to think he was, no-balling him with such ugly fervour that it was impossible to avoid feeling a vicarious humiliation at what Murali underwent. Men are prone to delusions when invested with the tiniest bit of authority in any case, but when furnished with a haloed moral authority they become monsters, or cricket umpires.

Hair and Emerson were after all only maintaining professional tradition. In every purge of suspect actions, umpires have led the hounding, right at the front of bloodthirsty crowds. Chuckers (and even the word is so phonetically derisive) have never been just men with kinks in their actions, or have seemed to bowl thus as a natural outcome of the overarm bowling action, which basically predetermines some degree of straightening (as an ICC survey discovered back in 2004). Cricket has treated chuckers as lepers because cricket doesn't have a reliable sense of a scale of bad: it can summon about the same amount of moral outrage for slow over rates as it can for Mankading, intimidatory bowling and match-fixing. It has a spirit nobody can define but one everybody screeches about when it is - regularly and easily - breached. So Murali and Saeed Ajmal walk around with an asterisk floating above them. To their detractors they are asylum seekers who exist only because of the weak-kneed liberalism of a governing body.

Maybe now the urge to purge is suppressed a little but the moralising over suspect actions remains; in the smugness of Australia and England that their offspinners do not bowl doosras, or feel the need to wear long sleeves (Shane Warne, one failed drug test plus one corruption scandal to the good, sniggering at Ajmal's long sleeves in the World T20 is a classic example of cricket's wonky moral scale); in Michael Vaughan tweeting and Stuart Broad responding to a photo of Ajmal in action and, metaphorically, nodding and winking. That yanks into black-and-white territory what is an inherently grey matter.

Suspect actions can be deliberate but they can also be functions of the mechanics of human bodies we do not understand. Could anyone have imagined that a study would find 99% of bowlers in cricket straighten their arm to some degree? What effects do injuries have, as a fairly serious accident did on Ajmal's right forearm when he was younger? How to explain the squirmy spectacle of Shoaib Akhtar being able to bend his elbow in ways that normally ought not to have been possible?

Where, in any case, is the study that sheds light on the exact nature of the advantages gained from greater elbow straightening? It is said that bowling the doosra is impossible without breaking the acceptable degrees of flex, but how to explain Saqlain Mushtaq, the pioneer, who did it with almost no visible bend at all? He even bowled it under the eyes of Hair and Emerson and elicited not a squeak, so he must have been fine, right? Even if we make the crazy assumption that post-Murali, Hair might have been chastened?

	Where is the study that sheds light on the exact nature of the advantages gained from greater elbow straightening?

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Cricket cannot continue being blind to the grey of this issue because soon we might be in greyer territory. Last week the ICC's cricket committee expressed its concerns about the identifying, reporting and testing of suspect actions. The processes, they said, need to change.

The primary reason appears to be discontent with the testing labs at the University of Western Australia in Perth, where bowling actions have hitherto undergone testing. The time and cost of sending a bowler that far has always been problematic but now more issues have emerged. One official familiar with the meeting last week says that there was concern about discrepancies in the findings of the Perth labs and others around the world. Apparently the Perth lab has not been following the exact protocols for testing actions that the ICC has laid down, disagreeing with the nature of those protocols.

So the ICC wants to accredit other labs around the world, in England, South Africa and India initially, and ultimately standardise testing protocols and results. The utopian aim is to have testing centres in every Full Member country, so that bowlers can be observed, tested and corrected at domestic level before they get further.

More significantly, they are also testing body sensors that could capture real-time analysis of a bowler's action during a game. These were tested by under-19 players at the recent World Cup but only in net practice, and much more work needs to be done before it goes further. The calibration of the sensors on the arm is a particular issue, especially after players dive in the field.

In time, that will be the least of the problems, because trickier questions will arise. Who will wear sensors in a game? Those who have already undergone testing once? Others we suspect have a kink in their action? Nobody, as the ICC says, is cleared permanently, so everyone is under the scanner theoretically. Singling out someone who may have a kink but has not been tested officially places an undue burden on the bowler and recreates, in a way, the TV trial Murali underwent. How real is real-time? Will we be able to see the results after each ball, after each over, after each session, after each day?

Mike Hesson has already asked how those with suspect actions will be policed: what happens, he said, if a wicket falls off a ball delivered by an action in breach of the laws? Will a TV umpire review it immediately? Umpiring technology hardly needs further complication. As it stands, these discussions haven't begun but these are difficult and complicated questions. It is, after all, a difficult and complicated issue, even if it feels sometimes that cricket has still not grasped this.

I feel for Sachitra Senanayake

by Girish Menon

When the English mob and commentators unleashed their self righteous 'spirit of cricket' indignation on Sachitra Senanayake I felt the need to find out more about this unheard of cricketer who has caused a minor tempest in England's favourite brew container.

So, I looked up his career stats to find out that Sachitra is 29 and had already played 1 Test, 34 ODIs and 17 T20Is. I also learnt that prior to his 'Mankadding' of Buttler, in earlier ODIs of the current series he had been reported for a faulty action and asked to report to Perth for a bio-mechanical examination about the degree of flex in his action.

I happened to listen to Test Match Special (TMS) at the time of Sachitra's Mankadding incident and at the time the commentators were insistent that Sachitra had not warned Buttler earlier before running him out.  The commentators also alleged that English bowlers, unlike Sachitra and Murali before him, were unable to bowl the doosra since it would be ironed out by coaches at the junior stages itself.

Personally, I feel any bowling action which does not threaten the life of a batsman should be permitted. This will balance the equation between bat and ball and make for interesting cricket.  

In his book Lila, Robert Pirsig describes the English reaction when the first stuffed platypus was shipped there. At first, the traditionalists were aghast that nature had betrayed their classification. Also, they denied that platypi could lay eggs and then suckle their young. The traditionalists also tried to ban the platypus out of existence since it did not meet their classification code. It was only much later that the traditionalists accommodated  the platypus in the field of biology. 

At 29, Sachitra may feel like the stuffed platypus on its arrival in England. After investing so much time and effort in developing his skill, he is now being told that if he does not obtain a clearance from an Australian he will not be allowed to ply his trade.  England may or may not have had a role in the reporting of Senanayake, but surely this could have been done discreetly at the end of the series so that the Sri Lankan team would not be compromised in the middle of the tour. Isn't this a case of giving the home team an unfair advantage?

Yet, when Sachitra legitimately runs out Buttler after warning him twice against cheating, the umpires had the audacity to ask the Sri Lankan captain whether he wished to withdraw the appeal. The crowds aroused by a partisan TMS commentariat then boo the Sri Lankans and Sachitra in particular.

So, Sachitra you are not alone. I empathise with your situation. I also hope that you have an alternative career mapped out for I am not aware of any cricketer who has retained his wicket taking skills after his action has been re-modelled. So power to you.