Muttiah Muralitharan's debut in International Cricket
For some, Muralitharan is the greatest bowler to have ever played the game and his debut was a decent one. You can say that there are two types of people- one who appreciate good cricket and achievements and the other being the people jealous of Muralitharan’s success and the style with which he wrote history. But being the highest wicket taking bowler the world has ever seen was not an easy road for this genius. He had to go through his share of trials and tribulations before being crowned as the king of spinners. It happened only after a career which had a lot of controversies, demoralizing incidents, unsporting crowds in particular places and even angry umpires and players. But it all had a beginning.
The greatest of tornadoes are only started by a mere swirl of wind. Murali started playing cricket for his school for which he took more than 100 wickets in two seasons. He was then taken to England as a part of Sri Lanka A and he failed to take even a single wicket there but that was not to stop him from impressing against a touring Australian side in the practice game. This led to his selection in the Sri Lankan team for the second match against Australia. He made his debut in the test match played between 28th August to 2nd September. The match ended as a draw and Murali ended up with 3 wickets in his bag.
His ODI debut came after some time when India toured Sri Lanka in 1993. He was given a chance in the second match of the series and he bowled 10 overs, conceded 38 runs, taking a wicket. Lanka ended up winning the match by 8 runs and later, the last match of the series to clinch the series by 2-1. Soon Murali became a regular in both Tests and ODIs. He was particularly known for bowling marathon spells and taking 5-fors and 10-fors. His high point in the career came after taking 16 wickets in a match against England propelling Lanka to their first victory in England. Since then, he never looked back. He became the only bowler to claim 800 Test wickets and also surpassed the record for most ODI wickets.
His illustrous career was marred by controversies when Darrell hair no balled him many times in the boxing day Test many years ago. He was also subject to frequent chants of ‘No-ball’ by the Australian crowd. He was famous for his bowling action which was also the subject of tests and controversies as due to his hyper-extended arm during bowling, he gave the ‘optical illusion’ of bending his arm more than the legal limit. Despite all this, he overcame his obstacles to finish on top.