Geoff Foley in action with the bat. Photograph: Getty Images As Queensland's Geoff Foley turned at his mark and strode in to deliver the fifth ball of his fourth over at the MCG, the off-spinner had no inkling of what was about to transpire. It was 1 November, 1997 and the second day of Queensland's Sheffield Shield game against Victoria.
"No ball!" called umpire Ross Emerson from the bowler's end. "I thought I'd overstepped for a no-ball and he said 'no, it's for throwing'", Foley told the Guardian. It was Emerson's first salvo in a series of decisions that would reignite the debate over illegal bowling actions the world over. It would see the umpire cast as equal parts villain and crusader and not for the first time in cricket history, it would be officials who played the lead roles in the sporting drama.
Foley remains the only Australian player called for throwing during a first-class game in Australia in the last 45 years. His experience was an ongoing farce that spread over months and gave some warning as to the second throwing controversy 12 months later that would send Muttiah Muralitharan's career into further turmoil and Emerson onto the front pages of newspapers around the world.
Surprised but pragmatic in response to the umpires call at the MCG, Foley sought immediate counsel with Emerson who, like Daryl Hair before him, had abandoned the traditional umpiring protocol of leaving a "throwing" call to the square leg umpire. "[Emerson] said my faster ball was a problem and he said: 'don't bowl that"'so I didn't." Shelving the offending delivery, Foley would bowl a further seven overs from the same end without incident, picking up the wickets of Victorians Ian Harvey and Paul Reiffel. The latter was destined to later join the umpiring ranks himself.
Dean Jones, busily compiling an unbeaten 151, had raised the ire of the then-Queensland coach John Buchanan by goading Emerson into calling Foley again, mimicking a throwing action at the umpire as the Queenslander prepared to bowl. After the game Buchanan angrily concluded: "One, I think it brings the game into disrepute. It was an effort by Dean Jones to unfairly influence the umpires. Third, he set himself up as judge and jury against a fellow player without any evidence himself. I think his action is quite serious."
If Jones's other intention was to needle and distract Foley, his "antics", as they were described by Wisden, were unsuccessful. "That's just something that I didn't bother too much about to be honest. At the end of the day it's not his [Jones's] decision to make, it's the umpires," says Foley.
"He was obviously trying to get them to call me and I think in an earlier game I remember Greg Matthews running onto the ground against NSW and complaining about me." For the most part though, Foley only really recalls receiving heat from spectators in the wake of Emerson's call at the MCG. "Every time I went to bowl someone in the crowd was yelling out "no ball" which makes it pretty difficult."
A typically tall, muscular Queenslander who cut an imposing physical presence along similar lines as his team-mates Mathew Hayden and Andrew Symonds, Foley recalls his career with earnest self-deprecation. Initially as an opening batsmen, Foley entered the first-class arena with a phlegmatic 155 on first-class debut against the touring Pakistanis in 1990. Foley recalled, "I was probably a bit limited in my batting ability at that time, a bit one-dimensional as far as having the full repertoire of shots required at that level. I got found out and once the word got round to the other states, the Bush Telegraph if you like, they knew how to bowl to me. The initial success was short-lived."
Reinventing his game in the trying battleground of Queensland grade cricket and spending each off-season in England playing Lancashire League cricket, Foley's all-round abilities found him back as a regular fixture of Queensland's mid-90s one-day and first-class teams.
His path to spin bowling is one that is laced with some irony; he came to the art out of circumstance rather than preference in the wake of a back injury that prevented him from bowling the medium pace that had been his stock and trade.
"I was playing league cricket in England during that period and I couldn't bowl medium pace so I decided to bowl spin because over there if you're a professional you've got to be able to bat and bowl in league cricket. It was more out of necessity."
With this new weapon in his armoury, Foley's game flourished. His efforts for Queensland in the Mercantile Mutual Cup of 1996-97 earned him player of the year honours and an elevation to the Australian A one-day team to play in the lead-up to the triangular series against the West Indies and Pakistan. In the first game he claimed the prized scalps of Brian Lara and Carl Hooper, claiming a further two wickets against Pakistan.
With the establishment of his bona fides, Foley was queitly spoken of as an outside chance for higher honours, primarily in the one-day arena. This included Australia's upcoming Ashes tour of 1997. "I think they were looking for a replacement one-day bowler and that's when I certainly would have been thought about." Whilst Foley's performances had drawn the eyes of national selectors, it was also the beginning of attention of a less desirable kind. "That's when I started to have the experience of people noticing the action and that was around about the time I might have ran into some trouble with the umpires"
Ceding to enquiries from ACB national umpiring manager Tony Crafter, Foley and the Queensland Cricket Association came back with an "exhaustive presentation" that included slow-motion video analysis, a bio-mechanical report on Foley's jerking, clunky action, and an all-clear from Ashley Mallett. If Foley had confidence that his action was sound and that he and Queensland had ticked all of the appropriate boxes, much of what would follow was beyond his control.
Then came Emerson's call in the game against Victoria. Foley again found himself in the gun and it was well and truly out in the open. He was the first Australian bowler called in a game since another Queenslander, Barry Fisher, in 1967.
"It didn't really matter what Ashley thought either, it was down to the umpires, so if an umpire's got a view, and he's entitled to his view, then that's not going to change anything, in my opinion. It was going to come down to who umpired me and what their view on it was. There was nothing I could do."
In February 1998, Foley and the Queenslanders travelled down to Bellerive Oval in Hobart for their clash against a David Boon-led Tasmanian side. For the first time since the November incident, Ross Emerson was scheduled to stand in a Queensland game. In the intervening time, Foley had played five Shield games without being called for throwing. There remained an air of tension and uncertainty though; the ACB seemed in no hurry to come to a definitive answer on Foley's action. Buchanan was publicly critical of Tony Crafter's response to Foley's situation, labeling it "fence-sitting at best."
"He didn't say Geoff's action was or wasn't illegal, but it would be left up to umpires during a game. This is a black and white issue and we need clarification from the ACB."
Despite umpires being uncertain as to the official line on his action, Foley remains adamant that he was right to bowl. "There was no way I was going to be able to change my action or anything like that. I wasn't pure but it certainly wasn't anything like you see these days. That's my honest opinion and I wasn't going to be able to change anything dramatically anyway, so I just had to keep playing as per normal and that what I was directed to do. I just did that and it was down to the umpires what they did after that."
"At that time it was two or three umpires who were interpreting it one way and the rest were okay [with Foley's action]. Emerson, Darryl Hair and Tony McQuillan. Every game I played, it seemed that they were umpiring."
In the game at Bellerive, Foley bowled five unremarkable overs in Tasmania's first innings before all hell broke loose on the final ball of his fourth over in the second innings. Again it would be the faster ball that sparked the imbroglio.
This time Emerson made his no-ball call from the square leg position, incensing the Queensland captain Ian Healy and his coach John Buchanan. Buchanan later became infamous for gnomic observations and dense management-speak during his time in charge of the national team, but Foley laughs as he recalls the normally circumspect coach remonstrating with Emerson. "That was when John Buchanan ran onto the field. I've never seen him so upset. It was completely unbelievable. So he was obviously pretty upset by the way it was handled." On the advice that Emerson was now prepared to call Foley for throwing every single ball, Healy removed him from the attack for the rest of the game.
Queensland officials were incensed that Emerson had seemingly had adopted a new approach to Foley's action in the middle of the game, having previously stated he only took issue with Foley's quicker ball, he was now claiming that every single delivery was a throw.
An exasperated Buchanan told reporters: "He said every ball of that over [was] crook, but he only called the sixth. If he thought they were all throws he should have called them." He then asked: "Where's the consistency?"
Healy played peacemaker, said: "Geoff is happy to have it come to a head and have it examined; he doesn't want to be branded. He wants to fix it if there's a problem." Foley remained steadfast. "I'm keeping as level a head as I can. It's not ideal, but getting on and playing my cricket is the most important thing." Trying to further defuse the situation, he added: "It may just be my perspective, but I think people are making a bit more out of this than it really is."
Whilst it was understandable that Foley sought to downplay the significance of Emerson's call, his pragmatic view was at odds with the environment surrounding bowling actions at the time. Foley's team-mate and 12th man in both of the Emerson-officiated games, Greg Rowell, had a similar shade of doubt cast over his action which doubtlessly curtailed his career. In addition, Victorian one-day sensation Troy Corbett, whose action was the subject of much debate, had completely disappeared from view altogether with no firm explanation from authorities. In the wake of Muralitharan's travails of the 1995-96 Australian summer, the situation surely would have been of concern to Foley, Queensland and the game's administrators.
Today, Foley's view on the entire episode is similarly measured. "I just had other things going on in my life as well so it probably just … it was towards the end of my career and I was getting on a bit too, so it wasn't the end of the world."
Like Ian Meckiff, who was sensationally "thrown out" of the game but maintained a warm friendship with Colin Egar, the umpire who had brought about his demise, Foley doesn't fit the typical profile of "the chucker". It is a unique phenomenon within the game and challenges the traditional view within cricket literature and officialdom that has historically tended towards the censorious when it comes to throwing. In the past, these players had been rendered a kind of historical persona non-grata. If not a black list, the annals of throwers is dotted with characters who have been the subject of searching and often pejorative analysis.
In his in-depth study, Chuckers: A History of Throwing in Australian Cricket, the historian Bernard Whimpress spoke of the way sharp practice on the cricket field will often "invoke concepts of manliness." The thrower often has to carry the burden of being labelled a cheat, though in practice most of them have at worse transgressed on the occasional instance. For Whimpress, "the stigma of the thrower and cheat has lasted down the years."
Foley was 30 years old when he was called for throwing and unlike many professional cricketers, was settled in a finance career that has kept him even busier since the end of his cricketing days. This maturity coupled with his own positive disposition proved a sufficient safeguard against any negative personal fall-out. He says his opinion on the controversy remains unchanged.
"I think that how I felt about it at the time is pretty much how I feel about it now. It's just one of those things. Things happen, you deal with them and then you move on. I certainly don't think about it too much. In fact never, to be honest."
Foley also stresses an alternate view as to the primary cause of his career tailing off in the years following the throwing call, saying that the temporary introduction of the 12-man team for domestic one-day games curtailed his impact as a spin-bowling all-rounder. Ironically, he'd still been felled by the indecisiveness of administrators.
"One guy didn't have to field so instead of me bowling my 10 overs they could bowl Paul Jackson who was obviously a better bowler. So he'd bowl his 10 overs and just go off and then those 10 overs that I was getting turned into two or three overs in a one-day game.
"So I think that [rule] probably affected me just as much as anything else, to be honest. I went from a frontline spinner to second string and once that happens I think it's hard to get any overs."
He says Emerson's no-ball calls neither defined his cricket career, which peaked with Sheffield Shield and Mercantile Mutual Cup wins as well as the Australia A selection, nor his sunny outlook on life. "Much worse things have happened" is his take 15 years on.
"It came at the wrong time because I'd just started to play for Australia A and all that. Whether that impacted on me or whether it prevented me from being looked at, at a higher level I don't know. It could have been both you know, I don't know."
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