A genius called Murali

By Rajadhyax

Those wide eyes, the mesmerising flight of the ball, the ripping off-break and the bamboozling ‘doosra’ have made him a household name in cricketing circles. Fondly named Murali by his team mates, the highest wicket taker in the history of Test cricket as well as ODIs, is regarded by many as the greatest off-spinner to bowl in international cricket even ahead of Erapalli Prasanna and Lance Gibbs. Whether he is the greatest shall be debated in the corridors of cricket stadiums but what will never be doubted is that he is among the toughest bowlers to handle on a cricket pitch.

Murali has finally announced that the 18^th July Test Match against India in Galle will be his last, after which he will retire from Test cricket. With his retirement (coming in the wake of Shane Warne and Anil Kumble also calling it a day) a distinct era of spin bowling would come to an end. Batsmen will breathe a little easy since these three men, among them accounted for over 2100 test wickets, 1100 ODI wickets and made some of the famous batsmen of the world look rather silly. They made some critics also look pretty stupid. All three came from a different pedigree and style and Murali simply ran past his two contemporaries in numbers by a big margin.

Small by height and big by stature, Muttiah Muralitharan, born in April 1972 in Kandy, Sri Lanka, made his test debut against Australia in August 1992. One year later in August he made his ODI debut against India. Since then, he has battled controversies, fought against biases and kept his famous smile so wide that there are those who call him the ‘smiling assassin’. So far Murali has to his tally 792 test wickets and 512 ODI wickets in 132 tests and 334 ODIs respectively. There have been a whopping 66 times when he has taken 5 wickets in an innings in tests and has done the same ten times in ODIs. There have been an incredible 22 occasions when he has taken 10 wickets in a test match.

He comes from a slanting run up, considering rather long for an off-break bowler, but then nothing about him has been at all conventional. His action is odd. He bowls with a bent arm and shockingly seems to be staring at the batsman at the time of delivering the ball – the coaching manual informs bowlers to stare at the place where they want to pitch the ball or at the base of the stumps. This unconventional approach has landed him in more than necessary trouble due to his unusual action.

Australian umpire Daryl Hair called a Murali delivery ‘no ball’ in a Boxing Day test match at Melbourne in 1995 and all hell broke lose. Hair felt that he had an illegal action. Later, another umpire (Emerson) also called him for a no ball in an ODI for chucking the ball. There have been three corrective sessions conducted on him under the watchful eyes of the ICC. Medical examinations also concluded that Hair / Emerson’s contention must be wrong since due to a physical deformity since childhood, he cannot fully straighten his right arm. Matters went right up to the possibility of straining diplomatic relations between Australia and Sri Lanka. The Lankan parliament took cognisance of the controversy. Thankfully better sense prevailed and the man was allowed to continue with his career as a normal cricketer.

But the pain and tears that came through ruined some parts of a very promising career. Rejection is an unavoidable equation of a cricketer’s life, but to have it in this form must have been the most piercing aspect of the controversy. It goes to show the resilience of the man that he fought through those difficult times and went ahead to surpass an Australian (Warne) to become the leading wicket taker in the history of the game. Poetic justice, one would say on hindsight!

Murali’s greatest weapon is the prodigious spin that he extracts even on relatively dead tracks where other spinners struggle to make the ball move an inch.

In the first half of his career, he did not have the now famous ‘doosra’ (the ball that is delivered with similar action but goes straight or away from the right hander). He developed it later and it became the second most destructive weapon in his armoury. Also, Murali is a very deceptive bowler. I have seen some very fine batsmen, including Sachin Tendulkar, Matthew Hayden, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting and Mohamed Yusuf bamboozled by the one that goes the other way. On some of these occasions they have also lost their wicket to the great bowler.

For now my only suggestions to cricket lovers around the world would be: folks, watch the Galle test match between India and Sri Lanka closely and don’t miss the action; you are watching a phenomenon of a bowler for the last time in test cricket, live on your TV. The next time you want to see him in tests, you would have to buy a DVD.