IPL-Muttiah Muralitharan

In era of test cricket, which is considered as bowlers curse or batsmen‘s paradise; we are going to shuttle about a man, who is targeting 1000 test wickets, none other than Muttiah Muralitharan who rose to fame through his miracle bowling.

He made his test debut well in year 1992 against Australia and his ODI debut came in succeeding year. He has played 127 test matches and 329 ODI matches since then. He has 770 massive test wickets and also 505 ODI wickets to his tally. In fact he is the only player till date, who has managed, to contrive more than 500 wickets in both formats of the game.
Not that his career isn’t been mired by controversies, there were plenty of speculation about his legality in action. In 1995 - 96, Daryl Harper, Australian Umpire called him for his illegal action in a test matches and also later in ODI series which followed it later. But he was cleared by ICC team of Biomedical Analysis Committee in Perth and also by University of Hongkong. In 1998 – 1999, he went through similar script and later cleared by further test by ICC.

In 2004 series, he was reported, for his illegal Doosra delivery ,by the match refree Chris Broad, which made ICC delve deeper into issue seriously. They discovered that majority of bowlers had habit of bending their hands, while bowling and his bowling action is well within stipulated 15 degrees bend allowed for bolwer.

But nothing perturbed Muralitharan the bowler, in fact he has sixty six 5 wicket haul and twenty twenty 10 wicket haul in his 127 tests and also astounding 10 five wicket haul which gives a fair idea of his sheer will power and determination. He has a strike rate of about 22 in both test matches and ODI, which was amazing figures in any era.

He has also represented Srilanka side in finals of world cup for couple of occasions, once in 1996 world cup and 2007 world cup in West Indies while in early one Srilanka side won. In fact he was one of the chief architects of Srilanka’s march towards world cup final in 2007, where he took amazing 23 wickets in that series.

Surprisingly he has played only 1 T 20 international matches and he is one of the players contracted by IPL, where he represents for Chennai Super Kings Franchise and he fared well last year for the Chennai super kings

Many critics feel that, he could not always replicate the same magic, which he creates in sub – continent pitches and his home grounds, but actually critics are always supposed to do their roles of criticizing isn’t it, but one cannot take a iota away from his sheer cricketing talent and weird bowling, which can even make a European football fanatic, to stand and take notice.