No cricketer has evinced as much divisive opinion as Muttiah Muralitharan. The debate whether he delivers the ball legally or not will rage long after he stops twirling the ball. One fact that lies undisputed is this: he is the most lethal wicket-taker Test and ODI cricket has ever known. In Tests, he has taken at least 5 wickets in an innings a mind-boggling 66 times (out of 220 innings). To put this in perspective, here the players who are atop the list of bowlers to have taken at least 5 wickets in an innings the most times:
M Muralitharan (SL) 66
SK Warne (Aus) 37
Sir RJ Hadlee (NZ) 36
A Kumble (India) 35
GD McGrath (Aus) 29
IT Botham (Eng) 27
Wasim Akram (Pak) 25
SF Barnes (Eng) 24
DK Lillee (Aus) 23
Imran Khan (Pak) 23
Harbhajan Singh (India)23
N Kapil Dev (India) 23
Waqar Younis (Pak) 22
MD Marshall (WI) 22
CEL Ambrose (WI) 22
The list is even more incredible when you realize that Murali has taken at least TEN wickets in a match 22 times!!
On his Movers and Shapers column on CricInfo, Gideon Haig writes about Murali, and a brilliant article it is, about the phenomenon that he is and how a genial guy from Sri Lanka has changed the way we view cricket. Here's a sampling but do read it in its entirety.
To anticipate any player's legacy is fraught with difficulty. Warne has left a wonderful trove of memories, but also an enormous gap: there has been no renaissance in Australian wrist spin to speak of. Because it is hardly less difficult to imagine a copyist of his methods, the same may prove true of Murali. Yet he has also, in an era of unprecedentedly intense coaching and 24-7 television coverage, with their homogenising influences, struck blow after blow for heterodoxy, for tackling cricket according to one's own lights. It can hardly be a coincidence that Murali's team-mates now include the world's three most innovative young players: Tillakaratne Dilshan, Lasith Malinga and Ajantha Mendis.
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