Vin­ode Mam­chan

Sunil Nar­ine's bowl­ing ac­tion has re­ceived clear­ance from the man who was re­spon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing him over the week­end.

In fact, Michael Ra­goonath who was match ref­er­ee for both match­es in which Queen's Park were in­volved over the week­end, said he re­ceived no neg­a­tive re­ports from any of the um­pires who of­fi­ci­at­ed when Nar­ine bowled on the week­end. "I stood as match ref­er­ee for both games and the on­ly way I can act is if a bowler is re­port­ed by the on­field um­pires.

"Sunil played in both games and the um­pires did not re­port any­thing to me. What I did was to video tape his bowl­ing to have a look at it and when we sat down and viewed the footage, we found him to be well with­in the lim­its al­lowed for bend­ing of the arm."

Nar­ine was re­port­ed for il­le­gal bowl­ing ac­tion against Sri Lan­ka in No­vem­ber when he rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies in the lim­it­ed overs se­ries in that coun­try.He was banned by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) and the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) from bowl­ing but has been al­lowed to work on his ac­tion by the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) in their do­mes­tic league.

De­spite this, Nar­ine was se­lect­ed on the West In­dies squad for the World T20 which starts in In­dia in March. How­ev­er, he must un­der­go a num­ber of test at Lough­bor­ough in Eng­land be­fore he is cleared to play in the tour­na­ment.At the mo­ment he is work­ing with bowl­ing coach Carl Crowe who has ex­tend­ed his stint with Nar­ine un­til Fri­day.

Man­ag­er of Queen's Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) Jef­frey Guillen re­vealed yes­ter­day that the club ex­tend­ed the Crowe's stay un­til Fri­day. "We thought that the more at­ten­tion Sunil gets at this time was cru­cial be­fore he flies off for his test, so he will con­tin­ue his work with Crowe."

Guillen was al­so at the grounds to watch Nar­ine in ac­tion. "On the week­end he looked good and is bowl­ing quite well. The is­sue I think would not be pass­ing the test but get­ting ready for the World T20, which is ma­jor. We are con­fi­dent that he would be ready but at the mo­ment his am­bi­tion is to get past the test, which he should take in about two or three weeks time."

On Sat­ur­day, na­tion­al coach­es Gus Lo­gie and Kelvin Williams made the trek to Wil­son Road in Pe­nal, to see Nar­ine in ac­tion against Clarke Road in the do­mes­tic 50 overs tour­na­ment. His coach at QPCC, David Fur­longe said that the coach­es were all hap­py with what they saw of him and was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with his progress as his spell went on.

The West In­dies get their cam­paign on the way on March 16, when they face Eng­land in Mum­bai.