A Certain Smile

It is a truth universally acknowledged -- or, at least, it should be -- that a practising politician weighing in on a sporting topic will nearly always sound contrived. To return to recent football world cup disasters for a moment, take the hideously contrived response from David Cameron to the Frank Lampard 'goal' against Germany, or the Nigerian and French political tantrums over their respective teams' failures.

In general, such incursions on the sporting arena will generate, at most, a bemused shrug from all concerned; in some cases, however, the intrusion of a public figure can cause real damage. John Howard's 2004 description of Muttiah Muralitharan as 'a chucker' was one of these.

Six years on, Muralitharan's Test career has come to an end, and the doubters who -- silently, or vocally -- agreed with the then Australian president are likely to persist in the belief that his astonishing haul of 800 wickets was achieved by means that contravene the careful distinction between throwing and bowling in a cricketing context.

I have to admit, deep down, that I am no exception. That is not to say I believe that what he does is illegal; his birth defect, the flexible joints, and the fact that others have been shown to flex far more in delivering a cricket ball all quash any such allegations. No, I mean that, for me, what Muralitharan has achieved will forever be tainted by the accusations of others. It’s not his fault, by any means, but it did spoil my enjoyment somewhat when I saw the wild celebrations in Galle yesterday when Mahela Jayawardene took his 157th Test catch, Sri Lanka took a 1-0 lead in the series, and Murali’s career finished on a satisfyingly round number.

To set the record straight, then, in tribute to the great man, here are an over's worth of reasons why Murali should be viewed as the greatest bowler of all time.

* 800 Test wickets is an truly mind-boggling total, but the most statistically impressive aspect is the frequency with which they came: over 134 matches, he averaged 5.97 wickets a game. The only bowler in the 10 leading wicket-takers of all time to even get over 5 wpg was Sir Richard Hadlee, whose 431 in 86 averages out at 5.01.

* The pressure generated by his unnerving accuracy at one end generated an unquantifiable number of wickets for the Sri Lankans who bowled in tandem with him. But don't take my word for it; here's Chaminda Vaas: 'It was easy for me to bowl from the other end because he was so tight, I have taken so many wickets thanks to Muralitharan.'

* As much as he was taking wickets for others, he rarely had others to take wickets for him. Vaas and -- more recently -- Malinga were notable exceptions, but in general Murali went it alone. His 5- and 10-wicket hauls -- 67 and 22, respectively -- are testament to this. (Shane Warne, next on the list in both categories, barely achieved half those numbers, with 37 and 10.)

* He certainly wasn't in the side for his batting. Test and ODI high scores of 67 and 33* don't sound too shabby, but these get put into perspective when viewed alongside his batting averages: 11.67 and 6.76 (alongside a T20 average of 0.5!) show that fielding sides were hardly quaking in their boots at the thought of Muralitharan in protective gear.

* He took -- and will keep on taking -- a phenomenal number of wickets in ODIs: 515, and counting (he hasn't yet announced his pyjama retirement). And if he had been born a decade or two later, who knows how many he would have added to his fledgeling haul of 13 T20 wickets?

* Last, and in my opinion certainly not least, he played the game quite literally with a smile. If for no other reason, this is why we should cherish the memory of Murali’s game, for this is what cricket is all about. Murali, as well as being fiendish to face, played with such happiness, such a knowledge that it was all a game. The smile that conveyed that love of entertainment will be his abiding legacy, and also -- one can’t help but feel -- what John Howard would have been met with if he’d voiced his opinion to Murali’s face.


ps. Thanks, as usual, to cricinfo for the stats used in this post.

pps. In other news this week, guess who got his second Test 5-for in as many games? Elementary.

Old Kids on the Block

'Underestimating the Australian cricket team' is an activity that comes about as recommended as taking one's eye off a bouncing football at a crucial moment, even after weeks of press coverage had focused on the unpredictable aerodynamics of said missile, or daring to publicly mourn the loss of a foreign religious leader whose values were opposed to the pro-Israeli opinions held by your supposedly 'objective' and 'liberal' employers (ouch...enough with the politics). And in the time of a McGrath-Warne or Thompson-Lillee partnership, it is one in which an England team could certainly not have been accurately accused of indulging.

Yet the success of the England team in the recent ODI series over their antipodean antagonists, and the somewhat unlikely triumph at the World T20, have started murmurings about a showing in Brisbane in November fit to banish memories of a certain Harmison-Flintoff-second slip incident 4 years ago.

Luckily, such rumblings have not emanated from the two most important figures in the England set-up, The Two Andies ('It's goodbye from him...'). The plain-spoken honesty (is there any other kind? I'm slipping into journalese, myself) of Messrs Strauss and Flower has been praised in recent days by Andy Bull. Underestimating the Aussies -- like overestimating the English -- is not, on this evidence, an option.

And looking at the result from the first neutral Test at Lord's in 98 years, this appears to be a good thing. Not because of the potency of a new generation of potent young pace bowlers: the two men who almost single-handedly took apart the Pakistani team on the second and fourth afternoons at Lord's -- Shane Watson (5-40) and Marcus North (6-55) -- were a 29-year-old journeyman seamer now better known for his batting and a 30-year-old part-time tweaker. Simon Katich's battling pair of 80s won him the man-of-the-match award for Australia, but the two names to join batsmen Charles Kelleway and Warren Bardsley on the neutral Test honours board in the visitors' dressing room at The Home of Cricket were bowlers. England, watch out.