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A fiery start to the end of an

ever? empire
A long, hard look at the man who has, in many ways, carried Sri Lankan cricket for so many years The Best I've Watched: The call had been
sounded for the end of West Indies' reign, but
Mukul Kesavan two men wouldn't go quietly. By Mike
Text size: A | A Selvey

This article was first published in July 2006 in the print version of Cricinfo Magazine Too fast on the past
Book review: Michael Holding's autobiography relates his life
Normal people don't think about sportsmen, they with typical honesty and vibrancy, but could have explored it
in greater detail
watch them. The thinking comes later, it's a second-
order pleasure. There are those of us who add 'The Shakoor Rana incident still rankles'
Virender Sehwag's latest score to his aggregate and Mike Gatting on team hierarchy, playing under Gower and
Brearley, winning the Ashes, that Test in Faisalabad, and
divide by the number of innings played (minus the more
not-outs) to work out how many decimal points his
career average has risen, but we do this in secret The first World Cup
Turning Points: Four years after the birth of ODIs, the
because we know that it is, like picking one's nose, a format was given validation by what was perhaps the boldest
furtive pleasure that not everyone is likely to innovation since the legislation of overarm bowling
understand. To understand Muttiah Muralitharan, to
WCL matches hit by bad timing
appreciate what he means to cricket, we should Inbox: Lack of buzz due to clash with football World Cup
begin, not with his statistics, but his Presence.

The difference between the great and the very good

is that the great ones have an aura. Sometimes, first-
rate players are undervalued because they lack that
je ne sais quoi. Among batsmen, Ken Barrington, Dilip
Vengsarkar, Andy Flower, Jacques Kallis, even Rahul
Dravid, come to mind as extraordinary players who
aren't given their due because of a certain anonymity,
whereas Viv Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, Javed
Miandad, Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Sehwag, even
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, walk the field swaddled in an
aura that magnifies them and their doings. Among
contemporary bowlers, Anil Kumble suffers most in
Murali: a television camera's delight © AFP
this area, forever typed as a dogged striver, a
wonderful senior pro, but not a Master of the
Universe, whereas Imran Khan's cricketing record is Related Links
lacquered into immortality by his charisma. Glenn News : Murali sets Test retirement date
McGrath, without question the most dangerous bowler
Players/Officials: Muttiah Muralitharan
of the modern era, doesn't get his due because his Teams: Sri Lanka
sour glower - either natural or cultivated - and the
mean parsimony of his manner make him hard to like
or even admire.

Murali lucked out in the business of Presence. He is naturally theatrical, a television camera's delight. That
bobbing run-up, the whiplash speed of his arm action, the helicopter wrist, the eyes huge with effort at the
point of release, the conspiratorial smile at his team-mates as he returns to his bowling mark, the radiant joy Sponsored Links
in playing and competing, reach out to the spectator and draw him in. Murali lacks Shane Warne's confidence Check out t he brand new Dhoni zone. Get to
that every ball bowled might have taken a wicket but for the obtuseness of umpires, or the fiendish luck of know all about your favorite Indian Captain
Brought to you by Aircel
batsmen; nor does his body language assert, as Warne's does, that he has an answer to every problem. Sri
Lanka have lost too many matches, and Murali lived through too many ambushes, for that kind of swagger. To HCL is t he No.1 employer in India and ranks
among the 25 best employers in Asia.
the spectator, Warne's minimalist, impassive walk-up implies magic; Murali's animation suggests electricity. Technology that touches lives...

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7/11/2010 Is Murali the greatest spinner ever? | S…
As a bowler, Murali's standing in world cricket is unique for several reasons. Maruti Suzuki Cricket Ratings

Witness t he Pioneering spirit of Indian cricket

One, not only is he the greatest offspinner the game has seen, he is an original. He's the first wrist-spinning
team
offbreak bowler in the history of cricket. Before Murali, offbreaks were finger-spun; Murali's huge offbreaks A product of Lufthansa
are spun from the wrist. Setting aside the controversy about the legality of his action, he has pioneered a new
Play to become a Music Millionaire.
tradition of spin bowling, and his most outstanding disciple is Harbhajan Singh. Two, while he didn't invent the Play the Music Millionaire game,for a chance to win a Nokia X6
doosra, the offspinner's googly (the credit for that belongs to Saqlain Mushtaq), he certainly perfected it. A with Ovi Music Unlimited.

delivery that might have gone down in cricket history as a freak ball that died with its inventor, is now an
established part of the offspinner's armoury. Along with reverse swing, the doosra is the most radical
extension of the bowler's art in modern cricket, and Murali is its maestro.

Three, Murali is the most important cricketer in the game today, because his career and its attendant
controversies have changed the laws of cricket and subverted a century and more of cricketing common
sense.

When Murali was called for throwing by Darrell Hair, he was already a Test-playing veteran. At the time it
seemed as if the career of a potentially great spin bowler was on the line. To be fair to the umpire, it was a
reasonable call to make. To most cricketers and spectators there was something strange and spasmodic
about Murali's action. Yes, Murali hadn't been called in all the Tests he had played till then, and yes, Brett
Lee's action had an obvious kink and he wasn't called, but being inconsistent is not the same as being wrong.
Arjuna Ranatunga's magnificent brinkmanship, Australian insensitivity, and the ICC's subsequent fumbling with
the definition of a fair delivery made sure that the issue became politicised, with Murali cast as villain or
martyr, depending on affiliation. Looking back, though, given the laws of cricket as they then stood, Hair was
within his rights to call Murali for chucking because to the naked eye Murali's arm did appear to bend and
straighten.

The sports scientists called in to adjudicate the matter determined that the bending and straightening was an
optical illusion caused by the rotation of Murali's congenitally crooked arm. This failed to satisfy the doubters
and Murali was reported several times afterwards. On each occasion the scientists found in his favour till
finally, a comprehensive survey of contemporary bowling actions established a paradoxical and ironical fact:
not only was the manifest illegality of Murali's action an optical illusion, the taken-for-granted legality of the
actions of the world's bowlers was an optical illusion too! Put simply, the scientists found that nearly every
bowler in the world bent and straightened his arm, including never suspected paragons of bowling virtue like
McGrath and Jason Gillespie. Hostile critics of Murali, like Michael Holding and Ian Botham, turned on a dime
and accepted without a murmur the new definition of a legal delivery, which allowed all bowlers to flex their
arms up to 15 degrees.

There the matter rests. As things stand, what started as a controversy about an individual's bowling action
has ended by calling into question the traditional wisdom about every bowler in cricket's history. If all
contemporary bowlers flex their arms, then it follows that nearly all bowlers in the past did so too, except that
we lacked the technology to capture the flexion. If McGrath chucks according to the old definition, then so did
Harold Larwood and Ray Lindwall and Fred Trueman and Wes Hall. In which case, why was poor Ian Meckiff's
career cut short when Shoaib Akhtar and Brett Lee are given the benefit of the doubt? Why did Tony Lock
have to change his jerky bowling action and geld his fast left-arm spinners when Harbhajan is allowed the
cover of 15 degrees? Having appealed to science, the ICC is now bound to accept its verdict, but even those
of us who support Murali's vindication should acknowledge that cricket has at one stroke repudiated a large
part of its common sense and rewritten its past. This is a huge step for a game that otherwise sets store by
tradition. Worse, it has done this without solving the problem: players like Harbhajan are reported and
cleared over and over again and on-field umpires are forbidden from calling bowlers for chucking. Murali's
vindication has, unavoidably, been achieved by fudging the Laws of cricket in a way that makes them
unenforceable.

The other one

But this is the ICC's problem, not Murali's. As far as he is concerned, the charge of chucking has been
conclusively laid to rest, which makes it possible to discuss Murali's place in the history of spin bowling
without being haunted by the spectre of illegality. This essentially means comparing Murali with Warne,
because otherwise it would be a very brief discussion. Warne apart, there is no one who approaches the
weight of Murali's achievement. A quick glance at Murali's five-wicket- and 10-wicket hauls, his strike-rate, his
average runs per wicket and wickets per Test, will make it evident that, with the antique exception of Syd
Barnes, there's no other slow bowler who can sustain the comparison.

The other reason to make the comparison is that the two of them are intensely aware of each other and
posterity. Warne, in particular, is not above implying that Murali's figures are bulked out by wickets taken
cheaply against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Murali doesn't reply in kind but he has his champions. Ranatunga
rose to the defence of his great bowler, calling Warne overrated, deriding him as a bowler who had built his
reputation against sides like England who are notoriously inept at playing spin bowling. Against the best
players of spin, the Indians, said Ranatunga, twisting the knife, Warne's figures were embarrassing.

So who is the greater bowler? There are those who will point to the fact that Murali has taken more top-order
wickets than Warne. There are others who will argue that the only reason this is true is that Murali is a one-

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7/11/2010 Is Murali the greatest spinner ever? | S…
man band and gets more opportunities against the top order whereas Warne comes on after McGrath and
company have decapitated the opposition. Murali has had home advantage more often than Warne - is that to
count against him? On the other hand Warne has the advantage of McGrath as a kind of siege engine, making
the breech for him to surge through - so does that make Murali's achievement more considerable?

The truth is that this race between Murali and Warne is the closest thing to a dead heat that you're likely to
get in cricket. There's nothing in it statistically. As for the other arguments, Warne can't be praised or blamed
for being part of a great Australian team any more than Murali can be awarded brownie points or black marks
for playing a lone hand.

Symbol, mascot, lightning rod

If we step back and view the two in the round, not just as cricketers but as representative types, Muralitharan
is much the more interesting figure. Warne belongs to the space where Australian laddishness meets modern
celebrity. In his adventures with drugs, women and bookmakers, Warne lives the tabloid life. He represents
himself, or the amalgam that makes up the modern individual: ability and appetite. He is justly celebrated for
both. Muralitharan, famous as he is, carries a weight Warne has been spared - the burden of representation.
Murali represents a divided, polarised nation. As a Tamil in Sri Lanka, he is a symbol, whether he likes it or
not, of a minority community. Descended from Indian Tamils who migrated to Sri Lanka's plantations a few
generations ago, he has been personally touched by Sri Lanka's sectarian violence: his family was attacked by
gangs of Sinhalas in the anti-Tamil pogroms of the early 1980s. Given that there is a civil war in progress
between Tamil separatists in northern Sri Lanka and the government of that country, Murali's presence in the
Sri Lankan cricket team is automatically charged with symbolic meaning.

For his articulate team-mate Kumar Sangakkara, Murali is a symbol of reconciliation and peace: "For Murali,
caste, class, ethnicity or faith is irrelevant - we are all equals. His life - the exploits on the field, his resilience
in the face of intense provocation, his natural kindness and generosity, his remarkable charity work with The
Foundation of Goodness - evokes a powerful spirit of reconciliation for a polarised nation.

"He has taken much from the game of cricket, but he has given back so much to our society. More than any
other public figure in Sri Lanka, he stands apart, a source of joy on the cricket field, an example to us all and
an answer to the ethnic conundrum we face in Sri Lanka."

But as anyone familiar with the history of sectarian

conflict in South Asia knows, Murali could just as
easily have been stigmatised as a Tamil mascot used
by the Sri Lankan state to disguise its Sinhala
chauvinism. That he isn't so regarded is a tribute both
to Murali and to the solidarity and affection shown
him by his team-mates.
Murali has lived most of his cricketing life dealing with
the consequences of being both a symbol and a
lightning rod for forces larger than him. He has
symbolised the Tamil in Sri Lanka, he has been Sri
Lanka's champion in the lists of world cricket, he has
even been the unwilling focus of lazy attempts to
explain the rifts in world cricket in terms of race and
colour. He has transcended these attempts to co-opt
him by being true to his genius and by playing the
game year after year with undiminished pleasure.

As an Indian fan who believes that Indian batsmen

define the gold standard when it comes to playing
spinners, I'll get off the fence if pushed and declare
myself for Murali. Warne is a wonderful bowler but
I've never seen him reduce an Indian batting line-up.
Murali's record against India, like Warne's, is
markedly less impressive than his overall figures. But
the last time Sri Lanka toured India, his bowling at the
For years Murali has had to repeatedly answer questions
Feroz Shah Kotla was a revelation. He went round the about his action despite repeatedly being cleared by tests
wicket to the Indians and in one virtuoso spell had © Getty Images
them groping, reduced to reading him off the pitch
because they couldn't tell the doosra from the hand, beating the outside edge over and over again, his wrong
'un spitting and turning like a legbreak. It was breath-taking. He took 5 for 23 in one inspired spell, destroying
the Indian top order. Sri Lanka lost that game, but given the quality of the opposition, his 7 for 100 bettered
his 8 for 70 against England when he spun Sri Lanka to victory at Trent Bridge in June this year. At Trent
Bridge, Murali conquered the clueless - even Warne's done that. At Kotla, he bamboozled the best.

Mukul Kesavan is a novelist, essayist and historian based in New Delhi. This article was first published in July 2006 in the print
version of Cricinfo Magazine
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