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Muttiah Muralitharan’s genius lay in controlling of the turn

There is something faintly absurd about taking 800 Test wickets.

Muttiah Muralitharan’s genius lay in controlling of the turn

There is something faintly absurd about taking 800 Test wickets. The absurdity is on a par with Bill Gates’s billions or the price of a Picasso canvas — we know such figures exist, of course, but they are so far outside our normal experience that they cease to have meaning. It implies that a man has played nearly two decades of cricket and has taken, on an average, over six wickets per Test. Yet, longevity and consistency are the least of Muttiah Muralitharan’s attributes.

Sri Lanka’s smiling assassin has made more fundamental contributions to cricket. He is the first wrist-spinning off spinner, an anatomical accident allowing him to rotate his wrist around the ball in a manner thought impossible till he showed how. It meant he got enormous turn even on glass tops, but it was turn he could control and therein lay his genius. His unusual action caused the International Cricket Council to finally define the limits of the fair delivery. His action was deemed fair, and that ought to be the end of that.

All comparisons ultimately break down because Muralitharan is unique, an original with no imitators. No bowler has had to face the pressures he has. An umpire who called him for chucking did so when he bowled a perfect leg break — such judges come with pre-conceived ideas. No bowler has had to face the burning down of the family business during an ethnic strife. It was tough being a Tamil among Sinhalese, and a marked man just because he was different.

Yet Murali’s greatness lies as much in his figures as in his strength of character, his ability to overcome obstacles. And his decision to give back to the game and his people the fruits of his own hard-won status as international icon. Sri Lanka have won 61 Test matches in all. Muralitharan has played significant roles in 54 of these, claiming 438 wickets at 16.18, taking five-wicket hauls an incredible 41 times.

He was always the man for drama, and the gift never left him till the end. As a run out and a near leg before from the other end almost deprived him of the crucial wicket at the end of the Indian innings, he was seen furiously gesticulating to his captain to bring on the fast men and get it over and done with. He might have ended with 799 wickets, but then Bradman finished with an average of 99, didn’t he?

But when the 800th finally came, it couldn’t have been better orchestrated. A catch by Mahela Jayawardene who had already taken a world record 76 catches off Murali. Just ahead of the threatening clouds. A wicket off the last of the 44,039 balls he bowled in Tests. No one has bowled more. Or taken 1320 international wickets. The nay-sayers call for an asterisk against his name. Not a bad idea, but only to indicate a cheerful greatness unique to those who overcome the kind of odds that Murali had to.

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