Muttiah Muralitharan – One of the Greatest of all Time?

I recently read a book called ‘In a League of Their Own’ and in this it had 100 ex and current international cricketers picking their all time world X1. An easy concept yes but nether less a very interesting one and one I found fascinating to see various top class cricketers pick their favourite players of all time. Every player had a different way of picking their team, some were more than happy to vary the eras of the players they chose where some decided that they were only going to pick players they played against or with. The three most selected players were Sir Garfield Sobers (73), Viv Richards (64) and Shane Warne (61). Sir Donald Bradman was only selected 53 times but the main reason for this was that players said that due to not seeing him play they couldn’t select him.

To me the biggest surprise was the number of votes Muttiah Muralitharan received, out of the 100 players he was only selected 7 times. I found that very hard to comprehend. I appreciate that one of the main reasons for the low numbers picking Muralitharan is the existence of Shane Warne but is Warne really 54 votes better than Muralitharan. The thing that surprised me even more than the fact that he only received 7 votes was the low number of players who even considered Muralitharan in their sides, this I found quite simply baffling, am I missing something? Don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of Muralitharan, have been ever since I saw him play live vs England at the Oval where he took 9 for 65 in the England 2^nd innings and 16 for 220 in the match but his records speak for themselves. This man is the first person to have ever got 800 test wickets and he did this at an average of 22.72, this compared to Warne 708 wickets at an average of 25.41 in 145 test matches, 12 more test matches than Muralitharan. Just taking a quick look at Muralitharan figures in all forms of cricket is quite simply amazing, his overall first class average with the ball is 19.64.

This man is just a wicket taker, he bowls a lot of overs but he produces, this is because Muralitharan has a thirst for wickets. Some of the players who selected their world XI even claimed they were basing their team on statistics hence why Bradman was selected but even those players didn’t pick Muralitharan, if ever there should be a reason where you can’t fail but to select Muralitharan then it is on statistics. One argument is that Warne was a better batsman and fielder, point taken, he was a better batsman and was a very good slip fielder but don’t pay too much attention to Muralitharan fielding in this World Cup, he was severely struggling with injury but in his younger days he was also a terrific fielder, very agile and a superb fielder of his own bowling.

There is one reason why Muralitharan wasn’t selected in more teams and one reason alone and that is the question marks over his bowling action. All the way through his career he has had to face a lot of raised eye brows from players, ex players and media people saying that he threw the ball. He even faced criticism from a number of umpires including Darrell Hair no balling him in a test match in 1995 and Roy Emerson no balling him in 1998. He was also stopped from bowling his doosra in 2004 for a period as it was believed that he bent his arm too much in delivery. He faced constant criticism all the way through his career, opinion is mixed, some say he is a cheat, others say he is a one off or even a genius. I firmly belong in the genius group, he has been provided with an extraordinary gift but no other spin bowler has been able to spin the ball as much as him. It has often been labelled at him that he is fortunate to have bowled a lot of his cricket in the sub continent but his record proves that he has got wickets in every country that he has played in.

When you compare Warne and Muralitharan with regards to wickets in each country they both struggled in India and Muralitharan struggled in Australia but apart from that his record in all other country’s was amazing. One thing said about Warne was that he was more adaptable than Muralitharan but Muralitharan didn’t have to be adaptable because of his god gifted ability and what he did have was an amazing thirst and will to bowl and get wickets.

Overall I don’t think there is much between Warne and Muralitharan, most certainly two of the best bowlers of all time not just two of the best spin bowlers. It is very unlikely there will ever be a player like Muralitharan again given his unorthodox style of bowling but as well as that he was also a very likable player, you never seem to hear a bad word against him and secondly he always had a smile on his face  even with all the criticism he received all the way through his career, it could be argued that no other player has received more criticism or scepticism about there ability than this man which says even more about how great of a player he is. Finally, yes Muralitharan would make my greatest world XI of all time, I find it impossible to leave him out.

My Team:

Jack Hobbs

Sunil Gavaskar

Donald Bradman

Sachin Tendulkar

Viv Richards

Garfield Sobers

Adam Gilchrist

Richard Hadlee

Shane Warne

Malcolm Marshall

Muttiah Muralitharan