Muralitharan gets the last wicket of the innings in his last ever test match to record 800 test wickets, forget what misgivings people have about his action, that is some feat!
And, back in the 1960's, when Colin Cowdrey pocketed that slip catch off Neil Hawke to give Fred Trueman his 300th Test wicket, we thought THAT was impressive.
Fred wrote in his autobiography that the selectors cheated him out of about 30 tests so he should have got about 450 test wickets and no one would ever beat that.
It's always worth remembering that that modern cricketers play more test matches so get more opportunities to amass these huge totals of wickets, but even if you work it out on a wickets per match basis I think Murali probably trumps the lot:
Murali averages nearly 6 wickets per match vs Richard Hadlee's 5 per match.
Cheating chucker. Don't give a monkeys about how many wickets he's taken. How many would he have taken if he wasn't a chucker? A damn sight less than 800 that's for sure
[cite]Posted By: Leroy Ambrose[/cite]Cheating chucker. Don't give a monkeys about how many wickets he's taken. How many would he have taken if he wasn't a chucker? A damn sight less than 800 that's for sure
Read the Times sport section today, you might change your mind.
They do play more tests now, but a few years ago they used to play on uncovered pitches, so I think, especially for spinners, this is a good leveller when comparing modern bowlers to the ones of yesteryear.
More evidence that Murali was not a chucker, taken from a cricinfo piece:
When he (Murali) wasn't harvesting wickets by the bushel, Murali was dodging the critics' darts. Those that hold him responsible for legitimising "illegal" actions - Bedi among them - miss a very important point. The laws were not changed to accommodate Murali, they had to be tweaked because the research done on his action revealed that even those with "clean" actions straightened their arms more than 10 degrees
Basically, he was double jointed and his shoulder didn't lock, giving you the illusion that he chucked it, when it was a perfectly legal action, so no he was no a chucker.
Comments
It's always worth remembering that that modern cricketers play more test matches so get more opportunities to amass these huge totals of wickets, but even if you work it out on a wickets per match basis I think Murali probably trumps the lot:
Murali averages nearly 6 wickets per match vs Richard Hadlee's 5 per match.
Read the Times sport section today, you might change your mind.
They do play more tests now, but a few years ago they used to play on uncovered pitches, so I think, especially for spinners, this is a good leveller when comparing modern bowlers to the ones of yesteryear.
When he (Murali) wasn't harvesting wickets by the bushel, Murali was dodging the critics' darts. Those that hold him responsible for legitimising "illegal" actions - Bedi among them - miss a very important point. The laws were not changed to accommodate Murali, they had to be tweaked because the research done on his action revealed that even those with "clean" actions straightened their arms more than 10 degrees
Basically, he was double jointed and his shoulder didn't lock, giving you the illusion that he chucked it, when it was a perfectly legal action, so no he was no a chucker.