Is there a reason why Sreesanth should be picked again?

[CG]

Yeah sure. I guess the selectors, bowling coaches etc must also have had nothing to do when they dropped Sreesanth, when they gave him warnings, and criticized him. Everyone who's ever criticized Sreesanth must have just been bored with nothing to do. Yeah that must be it. Do me a favor. The next time you decide to post, take your head out of your azz.

you douche,he was never dropped he was injured ,selectors,players are not foolish as you are that they would drop a bowler who is a strike bowler and can run through sides,his test performances both in india and abroad has been better than most indian bowlers and the guy takes wickets of good teams not minnows.he will get picked for southafrica series no doubt if he recovers from injury ,he is our fastest bowler and we need him.

[CG]

And I don't agree or subscribe to the view that the effect is magnified on South Asians. I gave and will give again numerous examples of bowlers like Lee, Clark, and Gillespie who had their careers finished off after bowling for a few months on these unforgiving pitches. On the contrary you have examples of bowlers like Ishant, Sreesanth, and Amir who register a pace hike after bowling on the pitches in Australia just for a month. I am not well versed with track and field and the role genetics play in that regard, but I have seen enough fast bowling in my life to form a pretty well grounded opinion that bowling fast has little to do with genetics and is majorly influenced by developing the right muscles and action early enough in your life.

Sub continental fast bowlers have clocked fastest abroad due to accurate speedguns and pitches ,where as most speedguns used in asia are faulty or not setup properly.otherwise whatever you said he is completly true.

[Ram]

Here's a list of the top 50 wicket takers in test cricket of all time;

Iframe: Open in new window

37 of those 50 are fast bowlers. Now, if you go by Shwetabh's assertion that fast bowling does not have ANYTHING to do with build/genes/ethnicity, then we should have near equal distribution of fast bowlers of all varying height/build right? But amongst the 37, as far as my knowledge best serves me, just three are under 6 feet tall (Malcolm Marshall, Chaminda Vaas and Darren Gough). The rest 34 are all 6 feet and over. Why is that? If the secret of becoming a good fast bowler is to merely 'develop the appropriate muscle groups at the right age', why are we not witnessing a more diverse spread of fast bowler builds? Why does the evidence overwhelmingly point to men of bigger/taller builds, being more likely to becoming successful quicks?

[Ram]

And on a related note, here's the list of top 50 run getters in test cricket of all time;

Iframe: Open in new window

And trend here is the EXACT opposite of fast bowlers. 35* (+/- 4) of the 50 names listed are under 6 feet. Frankly, the numbers dont surprise me at all. Batting is all about reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination and its only natural to assume that taller/bigger people have some relative dis-advantages when compared to smaller people, when it comes to quick reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination. The evidence is overwhelming - You're more likely to succeed as a fast bowler if you're 6 feet and over, while you're more likely to succeed as a batsmen if you're under 6 feet tall. * - I do not know the heights of some of the names listed there. So, the number is open to error of a few percentages.

[Sachinism]

And on a related note, here's the list of top 50 run getters in test cricket of all time; And trend here is the EXACT opposite of fast bowlers. 35* (+/- 4) of the 50 names listed are under 6 feet. Frankly, the numbers dont surprise me at all. Batting is all about reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination and its only natural to assume that taller/bigger people have some relative dis-advantages when compared to smaller people, when it comes to quick reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination. The evidence is overwhelming - You're more likely to succeed as a fast bowler if you're 6 feet and over, while you're more likely to succeed as a batsmen if you're under 6 feet tall. * - I do not know the heights of some of the names listed there. So, the number is open to error of a few percentages.

thank god, for a moment i thought you check all their profiles

[Fontaine]

you douche,he was never dropped he was injured ,selectors,players are not foolish as you are that they would drop a bowler who is a strike bowler and can run through sides,his test performances both in india and abroad has been better than most indian bowlers and the guy takes wickets of good teams not minnows.he will get picked for southafrica series no doubt if he recovers from injury ,he is our fastest bowler and we need him.

Off the top of my head, I remember Sreesanth being dropped from the ODIs against England on our last tour there. If I cared enough to look I'm pretty sure he's been dropped other times as well. Funnily enough, that was what three years ago? And at that time he again lost his rhythym, bowled a beamer, lost all control of his bowling and action all in one test. Three years later and the same is still happening. The guy is either a stone cold retard or is missing several genes in the least. So now how many other excuses do you have? Try again, your head is still stuck in your azz.

[Fontaine]

All you have offered on the topic is the "I am an expert' date=' so you have to take my word on it" argument. Not exactly how scientific and logical thinking is supposed to work. If I were to make some claim related to Astrophysics that is the last line of argument I would present. Why don't you present any research or argument correlating fast bowling with genetics and the particular gene sets which make Indians unsuitable for the task? I am all ears for that and would even take up time to read and research more based on what you present, but don't expect any favors from me for the "I am an expert so thou shalt take my word on it" argument.[/quote'] Well biometric studies have been done on fast bowling and the results show that the most important physical characteristics/traits have to do with the length of the arm and the ability to swing your arm as fast as possible through the delivery action. That's why you can have bowlers of all different shapes and sizes. Ultimately, though if the shoulder/joint muscles and ligaments can't support the strain put on your bowling arm then it doesn't matter what genes you have.

[msb1991]

Now, if you go by Shwetabh's assertion that fast bowling does not have ANYTHING to do with build/genes/ethnicity, then we should have near equal distribution of fast bowlers of all varying height/build right? But amongst the 37, as far as my knowledge best serves me, just three are under 6 feet tall (Malcolm Marshall, Chaminda Vaas and Darren Gough). The rest 34 are all 6 feet and over. Why is that? If the secret of becoming a good fast bowler is to merely 'develop the appropriate muscle groups at the right age', why are we not witnessing a more diverse spread of fast bowler builds? Why does the evidence overwhelmingly point to men of bigger/taller builds, being more likely to becoming successful quicks?

A taller quick bowler will have longer arms and so will be able to naturally propel the ball at a quicker speed. That is very simple science. Similarly, a stronger (not bigger but stronger) individual will also be able to bowl the ball more quickly than a weaker individual. Cricket coaching has just left the primative stage where there was no distinction between training to be big and training to be strong. These days, science is emerging for cricket (which has been in javelin and baseball for years) which shows that you can be strong without being big. It trains to see the distinction between useful and useless size and how to make significant steps in making somebody naturally weak into a strong individual by training the appropriate muscles and not wasting time on inappropriate muslces. This has not fully been appreciated in the modern game, but if it is, then it can help Indians, who I think we can accept are not naturally gifted in the fast bowling department, realise some sort of speed and some sort of resultant success.

[hari504504]

A taller quick bowler will have longer arms and so will be able to naturally propel the ball at a quicker speed. That is very simple science. Similarly, a stronger (not bigger but stronger) individual will also be able to bowl the ball more quickly than a weaker individual. Cricket coaching has just left the primative stage where there was no distinction between training to be big and training to be strong. These days, science is emerging for cricket (which has been in javelin and baseball for years) which shows that you can be strong without being big. It trains to see the distinction between useful and useless size and how to make significant steps in making somebody naturally weak into a strong individual by training the appropriate muscles and not wasting time on inappropriate muslces. This has not fully been appreciated in the modern game, but if it is, then it can help Indians, who I think we can accept are not naturally gifted in the fast bowling department, realise some sort of speed and some sort of resultant success.

lets just say Nandrolone won't work for all... Fast bowling has long been attributed to "fast-twitch muscle fibres" ..you're literally "born" a fast bowler...you can build on this to increase pace... Brett Lee...young Akhtar..Marshall..Holding..Waqar... Akram (well not in the same league..but Srinath ?) etc were not muscular... there's no point putting normal seamers through "Atul Sharma"isque routine to make them bowl quick - doesn't work that way. You either have it or you don't... They ought to catch em young and encourage them to bowl flat out

[Dhondy]

Even now, I would want to learn something about the correlation between Indian genes and fast bowling if you are willing to share it.

Shwetabh, I have simply lost the will, the energy to post long evidence based posts. I start threads, state what I feel are amazing facts on the Science section- they get 1 or 2 replies- who has the time or energy to read about genetics in the cricket section? But I guess I have no choice this time around. See genetics is such as broadbrush of a word, used too loosely. When we use the words genetics, perhaps we mean "heritability". Heritability and threshold are all important in polygenic inheritance. Most sporting traits such as bone mass, muscle mass, leg length, fibre thickness are polygenic traits, as opposed to mendelian traits such as eye colour, which are inherited in a dominant or recessive pattern. Polygenic traits are due to small contribution from a number of genes. And the environment. And therein lies the problem. Despite us having mapped the entire genome, it is often well nigh impossible to separate "genetic" factors from those due to the environment. Together they constitute heritability. We'll discuss threshold some other day. Back to that word- heritability. It is the proportion of phenotypic (actual physical trait) variance that can be attributed to genetic variance. The problem is that heritability is not a fixed property of a condition. Heritability varies according to what sort of society you live in. In an egalitarian society such as in the west, members of the society have relatively even exposure to environmental factors, and thus heritability is high. In societies where environmental exposures vary greatly between people, i.e. there is inequality, heritability is low. This is best illustrated by giving the example of a genetic trait- this is in fact a mendelian trait, but behaves like it's polygenic. Phenylketonuria is inherited in an autosomal recessive fashion- so if a child has two defective alleles, he'll have the disease- fair skin, blue eyes and sadly, mental retardation when he starts growing up. However, whether he develops mental retardation or not depends on what he eats. Thus, if he has an unrestricted diet, he'll develop severe retardation. However, if you give him a diet tailored to exclude phenylalanine, he'll be just fine. Environment==Genes. Want another example? Take the two types of diabetes. The risk of a relation developing a disease compared with an index case (called a proband) is designated as lambda. Now the lambda for sibling of a chap with type I diabetes is around 15, while for type 2 diabetes, it is 4-6. You'd think there is stronger genetic basis for type I, wouldn't you? Yet, an identical twin of somebody with type 2 diabetes has a 90% lifetime risk of developing the disease, while the same metric for type I is only 50%. What's happening here? What's happening is that identical twins often grow up close to each other, exposed to the same environmental influences. Thus, the high carb, high saturated fat, sedentary lifestyle that type II diabetics have, leads to the disease in both twins- environment trumping genes. Thus, heritability is lower in type II diabetes than type I despite the 90% concordance. See how difficult it is to tell genes from environment? That's not all. Sometimes, traits change within one or two generations- called acquired characteristics by Lamarck- only he didn't know then. There was a famous experiment in Sweden when the grandchildren of men and women exposed to famine followed by excess developed diabetes & heart disease early in their lives and died on an average 30 years earlier than those children whose grandparents hadn't been through the same cycle of feast and famine. What was happening was that during the famine, the genes of those grandparents had been modified by a phenomenon called epigenetics- basically by methylation of cytosine bases in DNA. This had reduced their ability to deal with the carb and fat excess that followed during the feast- and they passed it on to their grandchildren. It is thought that this may well underlie phenomena such as a mean increase in height with every passing generation- but again, it is difficult to separate environment from genes- the effect might well be due to better nutrition. Which is why, I could not say with any certainty that the difference between Asian bowlers and Caucasians/Blacks was due to "genes" alone. The differences could well be because of diet, attitude to training, lack of training opportunities, work ethic, parental encouragement, lack of peer pressure, loss to academic professions such as medicine or engineering, excessive heat contributing to fatigue while training and shorter training periods, early wear and tear on muscles caused by exposure to unresponsive pitches (your theory), easy satiation because of achievement of a certain financial status that would be considered barely passable in the west and a host of other "environmental" factors that could muddy the picture. Thus, a smaller bone mass leading to a greater risk of fracture could just as easily be due to genes as a lower protein intake in the formative years or the lack of rigorous training before teenage, which tends to make bone denser. How do I separate genes from environs? Is it scientific to plump for one over the other? Yet, there are clues. Children of schizophrenic parents tend to develop the condition even when they are adopted at a young age. Black African athletes do better than us despite the poverty and the same lack of training opportunities and poor diet. I quoted some of these examples in my posts. I hope you see my point that anybody would have to be very brave or foolhardy to pick one factor- say pitches- and say everything else is null. That doesn't represent a sensible POV, IMO. Sriram made some of these points in his excellent post- and got laughed at for his troubles. I'd venture to say genetics- and environment- play a part in the difference in speed and the longevity even among relatively homogeneous groups- such as various Australian bowlers (or English or West Indian...) Thus, to say genetics- or environment- doesn't play a part in the differential speed and longevity between an Indian and an Australian bowler is simply naive. Unscientific. Off to bed. Thirty minutes of my life I'll never get back.

[Sooda]

Having read all that (and the last few pages) The question remains on Pakistani fast bowlers Theyre built the same way as north Indians, same bone mass. Why then are they able to produce fast bowlers - genuine ones- and we arent? Its not 'Asian' bowlers- its Indian! (give or take Lanks/Bong) Does that come down to tradition and culture- The 'environs'? Do they eat more protein? :hehe: Right now there are a host of Indian fast medium men coming through- makes a change from about 15 years ago, so even culturally things are a-changing. But why do they always need that 'medium' suffix. Why dosent India produce out and out pacers when Pakistan get even crapola ones like Sami. For all the slating Sami rightly gets the one thing the guy has got is heart, he has bowled long spells at good pace- has been forced to when Akhtar was in the serial breakdown phase of his career.

[Ram]

Awesome post Doc! You have hit the nail, slam bang on the middle of the head. I completely agree with your hypothesis that a complex interplay of many variables is occurring here and no one yet knows what the individuals 'weightage' of all the variables are. When talking of producing an international class athlete, which factor is more important than the other? Is nutrition more important say, the environmental factors? Or does physiological traits supercede them all? No one yet knows. Part of the reason why I find it quite amusing to find that most people were quite skeptical of the impact of gene/ethnicity/race on the production of fast bowlers is because there are other sporting disciplines where athletes of a certain race have acknowledged advantages over athletes of other ethnicities. Take long distance running for example - I am sure a big proportion of people here will accept that sub-Saharan athletes have a definite advantage in that discipline and there are tons of evidence to support that claim. So, why should it be any different for fast bowling? I recognize that fast bowling is not just pure 'muscle' sporting discipline and as someone had rightly pointed out earlier, it has as much to do with biometrics, as it has to do with 'brawn'. But still, to completely deny that race/ethnicity does not have any impact on certain population groups' ability to produce certain types of cricketers, like some have done here, seems to be the incorrect approach. But once again Doc, thanks for taking time off and posting all the wonderful material that you just posted!

[Fontaine]

Look the plain and simple fact is that Indian bowlers participating in domestic cricket bowl within themselves on purpose. It's documented in interviews where the bowlers themselves have said that they cut down on pace in order to focus on accuracy because what's the point in bowling over 140kph on a flat pitch? The ball will simple come onto the bat much better to be hit on a pitch where there is almost no margin for error. Leaving genetics aside we know that there have been plenty of Indian bowlers who have in past bowled around and above 140kph. But in order for these guys to get selected they have to do well in domestic cricket, get wickets and keep their economy down and on flat pitches that's not going to happen by bowling sheer pace all the time and not focusing on accuracy. Again, there's a simple way to fix all of this. Make the pitches more competitive in domestic structure and focus more on bowling fitness and nutrition. Some steps have been made for this but until it's done system wide we're not going to see better results. The perfect example of this is RP Singh. At his best he was bowling around 136-138 with swinging deliveries in the first T20 world cup in South Africa on good bowling pitches in helpful conditions. But in the subcontinent without that kind of pitch and conditions he becomes a Sami. A guy who will cut down his pace on focus on accuracy but still get hit for boundaries. He's a classic example of a wasted talent, not because of his genetics, but because of the environment around him. Same with Pathan and to a certain extent Sreesanth. The problem IS NOT genetics. We already have talented bowlers. What we don't have is the infrastructure, coaching, and discipline on fitness and conditions that promote fast bowling. When was the last time we saw a domestic competition or test series at home where we could say yeah, look at the bounce and pace on that pitch. Look at the grass cover? When the conditions aren't there to help bowlers then naturally the bowler isn't going to break his back bowling long spells of effort deliveries when the rewards aren't going to be there?

[CSK Fan]

How come India produces better atheletes when it comes ot fields like running, weight lifting, tennis, etc when compared to Pakistan? Do these mysterious genes only show up in cricket?

[CSK Fan]

Having read all that (and the last few pages) The question remains on Pakistani fast bowlers Theyre built the same way as north Indians, same bone mass. Why then are they able to produce fast bowlers - genuine ones- and we arent? Its not 'Asian' bowlers- its Indian! (give or take Lanks/Bong) Does that come down to tradition and culture- The 'environs'? Do they eat more protein? :hehe: Right now there are a host of Indian fast medium men coming through- makes a change from about 15 years ago, so even culturally things are a-changing. But why do they always need that 'medium' suffix. Why dosent India produce out and out pacers when Pakistan get even crapola ones like Sami. For all the slating Sami rightly gets the one thing the guy has got is heart, he has bowled long spells at good pace- has been forced to when Akhtar was in the serial breakdown phase of his career.

We have our own Sami in Agarkar. the diff between the 2 is hardly 3-4 kph. Agarkar bowls in the mid 140s even now

[Fontaine]

The real disapointment here isn't how fast or slow these guys bowl. It's in how they use, or in most cases don't use their natural talent. Sreesanth/Pathan are most disapointing. It's not like these guys don't have enough experience or don't know how to seam/swing the ball. They have all the experience, knowledge yet one is a head case and the other has changed his bowling action twice in four years. Sreesanth tries to bowl a wicket ball every delivery and ends up looking stupid and Pathan tries to bowl 4/5 variations in one over when he's got the perfect ability to bowl with a great seam if he only focused on getting his accuracy right. In the last NZ tour Pathan still had that magical ability to bowl over the wicket with a 3/4 seam perfectly swinging into the right hander. A lethal delivery. Except he bowled that delivery maybe twice in a spell. The rest was garbage in bowling so many different variations of slower balls, leg cutters, bouncers, none of which he can bowl accurately.

[Fontaine]

In the case of Aamer, is pretty clear why he's able to bowl fast and it's nothing to do with genetics, his build etc. It's simply because he's grown up with an action where he actually gets into delivering the ball and swinging his arm right from his chest so effectively he's swinging his arm almost 270 degrees to generate much more force behind his delivery. Where as most bowlers like Brett Lee who would bowl at a similar pace start their delivery swing with their hand around their leg going through 180 degree arc. Although, I should say that there is no way Aamer is going to continue bowling that way with a front on action. He'll continue to pick up injuries because of it.

[patriot]

Shwetabh, I have simply lost the will, the energy to post long evidence based posts. I start threads, state what I feel are amazing facts on the Science section- they get 1 or 2 replies- who has the time or energy to read about genetics in the cricket section? But I guess I have no choice this time around. See genetics is such as broadbrush of a word, used too loosely. When we use the words genetics, perhaps we mean "heritability". Heritability and threshold are all important in polygenic inheritance. Most sporting traits such as bone mass, muscle mass, leg length, fibre thickness are polygenic traits, as opposed to mendelian traits such as eye colour, which are inherited in a dominant or recessive pattern. Polygenic traits are due to small contribution from a number of genes. And the environment. And therein lies the problem. Despite us having mapped the entire genome, it is often well nigh impossible to separate "genetic" factors from those due to the environment. Together they constitute heritability. We'll discuss threshold some other day. Back to that word- heritability. It is the proportion of phenotypic (actual physical trait) variance that can be attributed to genetic variance. The problem is that heritability is not a fixed property of a condition. Heritability varies according to what sort of society you live in. In an egalitarian society such as in the west, members of the society have relatively even exposure to environmental factors, and thus heritability is high. In societies where environmental exposures vary greatly between people, i.e. there is inequality, heritability is low. This is best illustrated by giving the example of a genetic trait- this is in fact a mendelian trait, but behaves like it's polygenic. Phenylketonuria is inherited in an autosomal recessive fashion- so if a child has two defective alleles, he'll have the disease- fair skin, blue eyes and sadly, mental retardation when he starts growing up. However, whether he develops mental retardation or not depends on what he eats. Thus, if he has an unrestricted diet, he'll develop severe retardation. However, if you give him a diet tailored to exclude phenylalanine, he'll be just fine. Environment==Genes. Want another example? Take the two types of diabetes. The risk of a relation developing a disease compared with an index case (called a proband) is designated as lambda. Now the lambda for sibling of a chap with type I diabetes is around 15, while for type 2 diabetes, it is 4-6. You'd think there is stronger genetic basis for type I, wouldn't you? Yet, an identical twin of somebody with type 2 diabetes has a 90% lifetime risk of developing the disease, while the same metric for type I is only 50%. What's happening here? What's happening is that identical twins often grow up close to each other, exposed to the same environmental influences. Thus, the high carb, high saturated fat, sedentary lifestyle that type II diabetics have, leads to the disease in both twins- environment trumping genes. Thus, heritability is lower in type II diabetes than type I despite the 90% concordance. See how difficult it is to tell genes from environment? That's not all. Sometimes, traits change within one or two generations- called acquired characteristics by Lamarck- only he didn't know then. There was a famous experiment in Sweden when the grandchildren of men and women exposed to famine followed by excess developed diabetes & heart disease early in their lives and died on an average 30 years earlier than those children whose grandparents hadn't been through the same cycle of feast and famine. What was happening was that during the famine, the genes of those grandparents had been modified by a phenomenon called epigenetics- basically by methylation of cytosine bases in DNA. This had reduced their ability to deal with the carb and fat excess that followed during the feast- and they passed it on to their grandchildren. It is thought that this may well underlie phenomena such as a mean increase in height with every passing generation- but again, it is difficult to separate environment from genes- the effect might well be due to better nutrition. Which is why, I could not say with any certainty that the difference between Asian bowlers and Caucasians/Blacks was due to "genes" alone. The differences could well be because of diet, attitude to training, lack of training opportunities, work ethic, parental encouragement, lack of peer pressure, loss to academic professions such as medicine or engineering, excessive heat contributing to fatigue while training and shorter training periods, early wear and tear on muscles caused by exposure to unresponsive pitches (your theory), easy satiation because of achievement of a certain financial status that would be considered barely passable in the west and a host of other "environmental" factors that could muddy the picture. Thus, a smaller bone mass leading to a greater risk of fracture could just as easily be due to genes as a lower protein intake in the formative years or the lack of rigorous training before teenage, which tends to make bone denser. How do I separate genes from environs? Is it scientific to plump for one over the other? Yet, there are clues. Children of schizophrenic parents tend to develop the condition even when they are adopted at a young age. Black African athletes do better than us despite the poverty and the same lack of training opportunities and poor diet. I quoted some of these examples in my posts. I hope you see my point that anybody would have to be very brave or foolhardy to pick one factor- say pitches- and say everything else is null. That doesn't represent a sensible POV, IMO. Sriram made some of these points in his excellent post- and got laughed at for his troubles. I'd venture to say genetics- and environment- play a part in the difference in speed and the longevity even among relatively homogeneous groups- such as various Australian bowlers (or English or West Indian...) Thus, to say genetics- or environment- doesn't play a part in the differential speed and longevity between an Indian and an Australian bowler is simply naive. Unscientific. Off to bed. Thirty minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Phew...that was some post. But I don't think it is required to convince Shwetabh. You only have to look at track and field sports or any other sport that requires speed, power and athletism. Shwetabh talks about how fast bowling is about developing the right muscles - I don't think sprinting is any different then. Is it any surprise that the Afro americans have dominated the scene ever since ? You hardly see a non black sprinter in the elite field. Is it any coincidence ? I think not. Asians are least genetically endowed athletically. Ditto NBA - Just look at the ratio of the Afro Americans to Whites. Ditto Boxing. Whites, specifically ones with Eastern European descent come next in the pecking order.

[thevortex]

Amazingly thought-provoking post, Dhondy. May I put a small question though? One of the more important things that we should look at is the propensity of our young fast bowlers who come through bowling at or around the 140 kmph dulling their pace down after just a season in most cases. Now, even considering the complex interplay of factors that you mentioned, there has to be some other reason for this, should there not? ________ Hot_In_Ohio live

[Dhondy]

After all that stuff, Fontaine, you write "The problem is NOT genetics." Even if you didn't read a line of what I wrote, how do you explain the fact that in 60+ years of playing cricket, we have never had a genuine fast bowler except for Kaps & Srinath for very brief periods? How can you rule out genetics so confidently? Where do you get that confidence? Sooda & Vortex ( I enjoy your posts, BTW, Vortex), I wish I knew the answers to your questions- why Pakistan produces more fast bowlers, why Indian bowlers slow down after starting fast...look, we can all hypothesise here until we are blue in the face, but science doesn't work like that. It needs tangible, irrefutible evidence of genetic variance and I'm afraid there is none- not for sporting traits. The way geneticists find out whether certain traits segregate to certain families, ethnic groups or nations is through two techniques- linkage and association. Linkage is mainly used for mendelian (dominant-recessive) traits and association studies are used for polygenic traits such as the ones we are discussing. Thus, for example, we know that HLADR4 is common in Caucasians with Rheumatoid Arthritis, HLA B51 is common in Behect's diseasae in Turks and so on. These were established after years of research. Theoretically therefore it should be possible to look at non-disease traits such as muscle strength, bone mass, tendon fibre strength across different races through whole genome studies. There are two problems. Firstly, the number of subjects required for such association studies would be enormous. Such studies are only feasible in small, relatively isolated populations such as Iceland, which is in fact conducting just such as a study- it's called the DeCode Project. However, for relatively inhomgeneous and very large populations such as the cricket playing nations, don't even think about it- the cost would run into billions and would probably yield very little. When you think of the enormous effort that has gone into association studies of genetic markers of common diseases such as diabetes and autism and how little such studies have yielded, the project is a non-starter. You see, when you look for numerous associations, you are likely by chance to come up with one or two genetic polymorphisms that may appear to be significant at first. However, researchers know that such effects are almost invariably false because of the effect of multiple testing. It is accepted therefore that for a trait to be deemed highly significant, it should have a logrithmic odds ratio for linkage as opposed to non-linkage of 5.2 (called the lods score). Such scientific criterion are very difficult to fulfil. Secondly, think of how pejorative such a study could be construed as. To try and prove that one race or one nation has better sporting or physical genes than another is opening a scientific pandora's box- it'd never get off the ground. Just look at the outrage my suggestion that Indians could be genetically inferior with respect to fast bowling has generated on this forum. Far better to blame the environment. And guess what, nobody can prove you wrong!