Murali to retire from Test Cricket

Muttiah Muralitharan has decided to retire from Test Cricket after Galle Test against India, although he may continue to play in the ODIs after that.

He is the leading wicket taker in both Test Cricket and ODIs, and I would not put it past him to be the only person with more than 800 wickets in tests. He currently has 792, which could have been more given the time sat out over the rows about his bowling action.

He is responsible for one of the biggest changes in cricket law to do with the bowling arm in terms of how straight it could be. His arm is naturally crooked and following constant calls against him, the ICC showed that nearly all bowlers have the same flaw when bowling.

Best spinner ever? Well, a certain Mr. Warne might argue against that, but he is certainly the finest off spinner so far.

I have no idea what you just said.

Don't worry, I feel the same way about baseball.

For comparison, it's the equivalent of Jerry Rice retiring in Gridiron.

Murali did great things for cricket. A great character, and a fine bowler. If only he'd improved his batting and fielding.

Murali's last test at Galle is up and running and he has a real chance of picking up his 800th wicket.

He got yet another 5-for in the first taking him to 797 and India are following on so, despite the rain affected second day, he has every chance of getting the three wickets he needs.

Only five wickets left for him to get the three he needs. Eighteen overs for the innings so far.

O/t and more importantly, Australia nine fo... all out for eighty eight. oh dear. :smack

He got one at the end of the Day to make it 798. He needs two out of the remaining 5 to do it. What are the chances of him bowling unchanged from one end tomorrow?

As for Australia 88ao. :smug:

This is what happens when you go to Headingly and bat first in overcast conditions. Salman Butt must be hoping that all his games as captain are as easy as this one has been so far.

Well he did it, with his last ball in a test match taking the last Indian wicket. Could not have been scripted better.

I freely admit that I entertained many doubts about the legitimacy of Muralitharan's bowling action, and could mention several other bowlers whose international - even professional - careers were abruptly terminated or at least put on hold over apparently smaller irregularities. On the other hand, because of my age I remember when spin was widely considered a dead art in Test cricket, and now I have lived to see Warne, Muralitharan and Anil Kumble take over 2100 Test wickets between them. An amazing achievement to have witnessed.

When Warne's Test career was in its infancy Fred Trueman was brave enough to state that Warne was going to take five hundred Test wickets. This was the stuff of science fiction at the time, but now first one then the other of the above three have achieved the unachievable and even unthinkable.

Mind you, Murali took his wickets at a hair's breadth over six per match, but S. F. Barnes took them at exactly 7, and for much less than 20 runs each...!

Agree absolutely about how fitting it was that his last ball in Test cricket should have taken the final wicket in a crushing win over India. That's on a par with Botham being recalled to the Test side in the 1990s and arriving at the crease needing to hit the winning run.

I freely admit that I entertained many doubts about the legitimacy of Muralitharan's bowling action, and could mention several other bowlers whose international - even professional - careers were abruptly terminated or at least put on hold over apparently smaller irregularities. On the other hand, because of my age I remember when spin was widely considered a dead art in Test cricket, and now I have lived to see Warne, Muralitharan and Anil Kumble take over 2100 Test wickets between them. An amazing achievement to have witnessed.

When Warne's Test career was in its infancy Fred Trueman was brave enough to state that Warne was going to take five hundred Test wickets. This was the stuff of science fiction at the time, but now first one then the other of the above three have achieved the unachievable and even unthinkable.

Mind you, Murali took his wickets at a hair's breadth over six per match, but S. F. Barnes took them at exactly 7, and for much less than 20 runs each...!

Agree absolutely about how fitting it was that his last ball in Test cricket should have taken the final wicket in a crushing win over India. That's on a par with Botham being recalled to the Test side in the 1990s and arriving at the crease needing to hit the winning run.

With all the changes happening in the game, I believe stats like this will become quite irrelevant, not too far into the future. Which is a shame, coz it's fun to compare Ponting to Bradman or whatever. Thoughts?

Also, apologies for not replying sooner. I couldn't find the thread. I'm new to the whole messageboard thing, and commonly do this sort of thing. :fail:

To compare when I started watching cricket, the two spin kings for England were Edmonds and Emburey. As in please dry up the run rate and get some quick overs in before tea.

It is a shame Sydney Barnes Test Career was cut short by WWI though, he would have had stats to make anyone jealous. If he had been around the same time as Bradman, that would have been a tussle worth watching.

The changes in test cricket have become much more about batting records than bowling ones and at this moment, with smaller grounds, smoother harder pitches, I think we will see batting records broken in the future. I would not be surprised to see another long running player top 10,000 runs and go on to challenge Ponting and Tendulkar for runs.

I cannot see bowling records being beaten for Tests though, not only because the pitches are less helpful, but also due to the change in the way bowling is done. Fast bowlers are currently bruning out too quickly due to the extra load of ODI and 20-20 matches now cluttering the calendar. I also wonder if the sport sciences which are supposed to lengthen and protect fast bowlers from their action are having a negative impact by making them bowl in a manner which is not natural to the bowler and has to be trained in.

Yes, by Bradman's time Barnes was a very old man in cricketing terms, although he was still playing league cricket with any amount of success. Legend has it that when Barnes was playing, batting sides used to have the next four men padded up.

From this article, if in some imaginary world Barnes had played as many Tests as Murali or bowled as many overs, he would have had nine hundred wickets; if he had bowled enough to concede as many runs, he would have had 1100. He had one eight-year run in league cricket with a bowling average of 5.

And talking of phenomenal statistics, Tendulkar today notched his forty-eighth Test hundred - and he's still some way short of forty years of age and might carry on for a good few years yet. (But, had Bradman played as many Test innings as Sachin and scored hundreds at the same rate, he would have made nearly a hundred of them... and more had there been Zimbabwes and Bangladeshes to play against. Not that Tendulkar owes much of his awe-inspiring Test figures to the minnow nations.)

Having said all that, though, Murali has done quite well, IMO. It's just a shame that all the changes make stats less and less useable for comparison.

And I wonder, what difference it would've made if Umpire Hair hadn't done what he did to Murali...