It is amazing what new IT (information technology) can do for you.

Okay, not being a whizz when it comes to these fancy new hand phones that connect you to the web with their inbuilt GPRS which links to your email, it was like playing a modern game of snakes and ladders. Connectivity, Yahaluweni, was a matter of success one move and frustration the next.

After all, the old one hand phone which did it all through the laptop was sufficient. But as an Indian colleague laughingly pointed out during the latest tour of the island, the IT being used was not only six years old, but in modern terms, a genuine dinosaur.

On the way back from a visit to Galle last Friday and the beginning of the fourth Aravinda de Silva Cricket Academy Pathway Camp, sponsored by Coca-Cola, the bright cheery PR officer soon sorted out the snakes and ladders configuration act on this new hand phone.

It is amazing. Logging on to the email account showed there one from an old colleague in Australia, alerting me to the sad news of the death of former Test umpire and Australian Cricket Board president Col. Egar.

Another is how, amid the rumpus between the SLC board and the players that Sri Lanka have agreed to play in October a T20 type tournament in far off Canada. A filler for the now abandoned Champions Trophy, it also posed the question of, do the players need this type of exposure?

But news of Col. Egar’s death brought back memories of what was a deeply rancorous incident on my first tour of Australia in 1963-64. As a news agency features writer, the Ian Meckiff no-balling story in that first Test of the series kept me busy for days.

What was handy is having been present at Lord’s in 1960 and the unfolding of the Geoff Griffin no-ball events; it prepared me for the controversy that was about to descend on the press box.

This, mind you, was in an age some fifteen years before the IT era. It meant that the fax, computers, laptops, email or hand phones were all crystal ball gazing events. Telex was a genuine snail mail way of getting requests from a London office about what was needed on the Meckiff story.

Years later, when writing with Jackie McGlew the ‘South Africa’s Cricket Captains’ book, it needed several interviews with a now long-time friend Trevor Goddard. His baptism as a Test captain, at Brisbane’s Woolloongabba, venue of the first tied Test in 1960-61, could not have come at a more testing time.

He had watched, with mixed feelings with McGlew the end of Griffin’s career as the bowler was repeatedly no-balled for throwing. Now came the next acid test. Meckiff, the likeable, cheerful Victorian, whose action had been the subject of much debate from the series against Peter May’s team of 1958-59, was included in the Australian side for the first Test.

It is a selection shrouded in mystery and to some it has led to conspiracy theories: of why he was suddenly plucked out of the array of fast bowlers for that game. One is that Sir Donald Bradman was behind it. The theory, or so it went, was how The Don used Meckiff as a fall guy as part of the plan to eradicate throwing from the game.

He had led a campaign against it in 1961, as had done Sir George (Gubby) Allen, an hierarchical type who had a big say in how the old Imperial Cricket Conference ran the game at so-called international level. Earlier this year, published letters revealed him as an old Raj type racist. His remarks about the Aborigines are particularly disgraceful for someone in such a high position.

Was there a conspiracy regarding Meckiff’s selection? Egar, who in discussion in February 1992 in Perth, on the eve of South Africa’s re-entry to Australian cricket after 28 years, denied there had been any intrigue. But why had he been selected ... and then humiliated?

"Go and ask the selectors," suggested the famous umpire, for whom Trevor Goddard and many others, Meckiff included, had the greatest respect.

"Would Richie (Benaud), as captain have agreed to it?"

"You would need to ask him that. I certainly was not a party to any pre-match (Test) discussion over his (Meckiff’s) action. We had been asked, requested really, the season before to come down hard on players we thought had suspect actions.

"As an umpire, I knew what the law said (at the time), about what is and what is not an illegal action. I acted the way I saw it."

Although, on the same 1992 World Cup expedition Meckiff agreed to answer a few questions for the book on SA Cricket Captains, he was none the wiser about his selection other than the need for a fast bowler in the team.

"I had taken a lot of wickets leading up to the Test and as Alan Davidson had retired and it suited the selectors," he explained. "I do know that some (ACB) board members were unhappy, but the small fellow (Bradman) was the chairman of selectors. If there had been doubts about my action he (Bradman), wouldn’t have selected me."

Both teams went into that Gabba Test with some apprehension over Meckiff’s selection. However, judgment on his action was delayed until well into the second day after Australia, batting first, scored 435.

Umpire Egar was in little doubt after passing the first delivery without comment.

"No b-a-l-l!" came his call from square leg. The crowd went numb and a sick silence swept over them. Egar stood motionless. The Australian fielders, uncertain, looked at each other, unable to believe what was taking place.

Meckiff walked back to his mark that afternoon of December 7, admitting to experiencing a cold sweat on his brow. It was about 2.06 pm. He again ran in off his short run-up ... the crowd hushed and again came the call "No b-a-I-I!" from Egar. The spectators now reacted angrily and booed the umpire.

Benaud moved over to Meckiff as the atmosphere in the ground became super-charged and spectators boiled with rage.

"Well, Meck, I think we’ve got a bit of a problem. I don’t quite know what we should do," he said, as the cat-calling of the umpires went on. "Either bowl as quickly as you can, or bowl it slow and get through the over."

Stunned and upset as he was, Meckiff chose the latter suggestion: he wanted the over finished and the gut-aching ordeal over. It was a 12-ball over (all bowled to Goddard), with Meckiff called twice more by Egar before retiring to the sanctuary of the outfield, where he cut a lonely, disconsolate figure.

Egar’s actions spelled the end of another Test bowler’s career and the culmination of a controversy that had plagued the bowler since that series against May’s team.

There was a view among most journalists covering the tour that Meckiff was the final fall guy to wipe the slate clean of the game’s chuckers. Overlooked for the tour of England in 1961 because of injury, he played 18 Tests, but only two against the 1960-61 West Indians at home, because of a recurring injury before disappearing until being selected for that 1963 match in Brisbane.

He had toured South Africa in 1957-58, where he played in four tests, and India and Pakistan in 1959, but had escaped the umpire’s axe until December 7, 1963.

Meckiff had become the vociferous crowd’s hero and was chaired, shoulder high, from the ground at the end of the day’s play with the spectators anxious to help the Victorian ease the hurt and ache inside.

Shades of the Griffin affair at Lord’s? Hardly. Griffin was at the height of the chucking row when the witch hunt was on and the law under critical investigation; Meckiff’s ordeal came when the wording of the law of what constituted a throw and what did not, had been revised. Meckiff’s action had been queried during the South African summer of 1957-58, when he toured with Ian Craig’s Australians, but nothing was done about it. Yet, the South African batsmen who faced the big Victorian in that series were all convinced he threw.

In the light of what happened over Griffin, and his being cleared for the tour of England in 1960 along with New Zealander Gary Bartlett in 1961-62, South African umpires in those years seemed uncertain of what constituted the throwing law as them framed.

One of the problems is that umpires have to act as judge and jury and are reluctant to apply the law, especially as administrators of most Test nations, make it known to the umpires how the calling of a bowler for throwing might affect their attitude. In some cases, there are charges of racism when in fact application of the law has nothing to do with this.

Benaud, after being summoned in 1962-63 with other State captains to Bradman’s home, saw films of bowlers who had either suspect or illegal actions and made a mental note not to use such bowlers again. Thus he declined to bowl Gordon Rorke in a match between New South Wales and South Australia.

Meckiff’s agony at Brisbane could have been avoided on the evidence of the umpires’ ruling in two Sheffield Shield matches the season before. He was called in Adelaide for the first time in his career, although the fast bowler did take eight wickets and was only called early in the South Australian first innings.

The second time ironically was at the Gabba, the scene of the Test nightmare the following summer.