The legendary Muttiah Muralitharan solely sees Ravichandran Ashwin reaching the 700-800 wicket mark among the many present crop of spinners and feels Nathan Lyon, who performs his one centesimal Test from Friday, “may be not good enough to reach that far”.
Muralitharan’s stupendous file of 800 Test wickets stays very a lot intact with Shane Warne (708) and Anil Kumble (619) rounding up the top-three wicket-takers within the longest format.
“Ashwin has a chance because he is a great bowler. Other than that, I don’t think any younger bowler coming in will go to 800. Maybe Nathan Lyon is not good enough to reach it. He is close to 400 (396) but he has had to play many, many matches to get there,” Muralitharan was quoted as saying in a Michael Vaughan column for the London-based Telegraph.
Ashwin has 377 wickets in 74 Tests at a median of 25.53 whereas Lyon, among the many finest Australian spinners of all-time, averages 31.98 in 99 Tests. He is 4 shy of the 400-wicket mark.
Leaving apart Ashwin and Lyon, there’s a dearth of world-class spinners within the fashionable sport. The Sri Lankan nice put that worrying development down to alter in batsmen’s method in comparison with his enjoying days.
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“The drawback in Test cricket is that Twenty20s and one-day internationals have modified the dynamics.
“When I played, the batsmen were technically so good and wickets were flat; now, they try to finish matches in three days. The bowlers in my day had to do extra work to get spin and do something magic to get results.”
“Nowadays, if you bowl line and length over a period of time, you will get five wickets. It is guaranteed because batsmen cannot stay for long without attacking.”
Muralitharan performed within the period of Warne, Kumble, Saqlain Mushtaq, Mushtaq Ahmed and in a while the likes of Harbhajan Singh burst on to the scene.
“You have a greater probability of taking wickets, which is why spinners solely need to set the sphere correctly, bowl line and size and let the pitches and batsmen do the remainder.
Murali completed his profession with 800 take a look at wickets and 534 scalps in one-day internationals. (Source: Express archive)
“Spinners used to need to work laborious for wickets, which is why they labored laborious on growing different deliveries.Now they do this in T20 cricket as a substitute. They bowl completely different variations as a result of batsmen are coming after them. But in
Test cricket you don’t have to do it,” he mentioned.
Muralitharan performed just one sequence with the DRS, in opposition to India in 2008, and believes it might have added to his unimaginable haul of 800 if he might use the expertise.
“We beat them simply (India). I’d say I’d have had extra wickets [with DRS] as a result of it could have been laborious for batsmen to make use of the pad.
“If I got here around the wicket to a right-hander and if he missed the ball, there was a 90 per cent probability the ball would hit the wicket. But umpires had been judging that it was not out as a result of it was hitting the entrance leg.
“Batsmen had the good thing about the doubt. Not now. Maybe runs are much less now as a result of DRS provides the benefit to the bowler.
“I can remember when you played us, if you hid the bat and kicked us away now, you would be out. With DRS, they will say whether you played a shot or not. You will be out if the ball hits the wicket.”
