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As with Sachin Tendulkar, one of the pillars of Muttiah Muralitharan’s greatness has been his sheer longevity. Yesterday’s dramatic final act at the Wankhede stadium brought down the curtain on an international career spanning 19 years in which he bowled a record number of balls in Tests and one-dayers.
Never mind the peerless haul of wickets, the sheer physical demand of whirring over that freakishly supple shoulder and wrist nearly 63,000 times in international cricket alone deserves recognition. Only somebody with a profound love of the game and of competition could put himself through so much. He fought off aches and pains to play in all Sri Lanka’ s World Cup matches. Once his team were into the knockouts, there was no way he would pull out.
Although some of the fizz had gone from his bowling, which is why he retired from Tests last year, he is still eyeing battles to be won. There’s another IPL season to play — Chennai Super Kings, Murali’s franchise, are the defending champions — and he joins Gloucestershire’s Twenty20 side this summer. For all the blood, sweat and tears, few cricketers have so evidently enjoyed themselves, or got into so little disciplinary trouble. Indeed, the main complaint of his teammates is that he was mischievous in the dressing room and too friendly towards opponents they were striving to beat.
Many observers asserted that Murali would never end the doubt surrounding the legality of his action, though he came close to doing so through his willingness to go through tests that showed he could bowl his full repertoire without “throwing”.
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Once they realised how supple his wrist and shoulder were, most sceptics dropped their complaints. Because Murali played for so long, there was time for this educative process to do its work. If Tendulkar is cricket’s most worshipped player, Murali must be the most scrutinised. He bore it all with good grace.
Looking back, the concerted campaign of Australian umpires in the mid-1990s to call Murali — a modest son of a Tamil confectioner from Kandy — for throwing seems like the Old World trying to block the New. Murali heralded a wave of exotic Asian cricketers who knew little of coaching orthodoxy and cared less.
He fought to be allowed to continue bowling in his way and by winning that fight he secured for all cricketers the right to express individuality. Nobody had opened the batting with such brutal intent as Sanath Jayasuriya in one-dayers or Virender Sehwag in Tests. Nobody had opened the bowling with as low an arm as Lasith Malinga or scooped the ball over his head in one-day cricket like Tillakaratne Dilshan.
The MCC coaching manual, once the sole arbiter of correct style, last appeared in 1994, two years after Murali made his Test debut. There was simply no point updating it thereafter. Cricket’s Old World order died when Murali and Jayasuriya won the 1996 World Cup for Sri Lanka.
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Without Murali, the team would never have reached three of the past five World Cup finals. He enabled them to win matches and keep on winning them. Before he came along, Sri Lanka had won just two Tests. With him in their side, they won 40% of Tests and nearly 60% of ODIs.
Given the restriction of 10 overs a man, there is a limit to how much one bowler can do towards victory in a one-dayer but in Tests, when Murali could bowl without limit — and attrition was a key element in his approach — he was an immense influence. He had to be if Sri Lanka were to win.
He once bowled 300 overs in the space of three successive Tests against England and his career average of 331 balls a Test is second only to Lance Gibbs among spinners, while 50 ahead of Shane Warne.
When everything is taken into consideration — the fight for acceptance, the development of the doosra, the wicket hauls and the sheer tirelessness — Murali can be considered the greatest international bowler there has ever been. His 1,340 international wickets will surely never be beaten (Warne on 1,001 is the only other person in four figures).
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Some of those who batted against both say Warne was the cleverer operator. He set shrewder fields, varied his line of attack more (Murali was too often happy going over the wicket) and was very evidently in the batsman’s face. But this is mainly a distinction of style. Murali had less support from the other end and was obliged to be more patient; Warne was bowling at batsmen who were under relentless attack and who might survive if he didn’t get on with things.
Murali also had more success than Warne against Tendulkar, the game’s pre-eminent batsman. Whereas Warne took Tendulkar’s wicket only four times in internationals, Murali did so on 13 occasions — eight in Tests and five in ODIs, though admittedly from many more meetings. Even though Tendulkar took fewer risks in the second half of his career, Murali managed to dismiss him six times in the space of 12 Tests.