Muttiah Muralitharan: The ICC Cricket Hall of Fame (and justice?)

Murali didn’t get worse. He got better.

Muttiah Muralitharan has spun his way into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. A surprise? Not really. Justice? Of a sort. Yes, cheats should be made an example of, even if we must work harder for our verdicts to be more proportionate to their vice.

But Murali was no cheat. He was too pure, too proud, too principled. His nearly 63,000 deliveries and 1334 wickets in international cricket saw pretty much that same action - in the glare of slo-mo. Yet he submitted to humiliating experiments that’d make even lesser stars bristle.

No. His guile wasn’t so much in his elbow. It lay elsewhere: in his fingers, his wrist, his eyes, his smile. He sent down about 2500 more ODI deliveries than Mushtaq Ahmed and Saqlain Mushtaq combined but conceded only 690 more runs and took 85 more wickets.

Think about that. How tired, ineffective you get after bowling another 500 deliveries, how inaccurate after yet another 500, how wayward after.......you get the picture.

Murali didn’t get worse. He got better.

Of those tested by having to bowl over 28,000 Test deliveries, he has as many ‘five-fors’ (67) as Walsh (22), Vettori (20), Harbhajan (25) combined. That’s more ‘five-fors’ than Thomson, Roberts, Sobers, Holding, Willis, Garner combined (his 67 to their 61) having used just half their combined deliveries (his 44039 deliveries to their 86475).

Half!?

Of seven ODI bowlers who’ve been tested by bowling over 14,000 deliveries, Murali stands alone with Akram in holding a bowling average below 24 and alone in holding his strike-rate below 36.

Over time even stunning stats sag. Murali’s didn’t.

At the point of release, he was all agony: eyebrows exploding from his skull as if some phantom-physio next to him were stitching a gash in his side but using an unforgivably blunt screwdriver as needle. Lips twisted, saucer-wide eyes staring at a cloud somewhere high above deep fine-leg.

After release, he was usually all smiles as he watched even the most contemptuous batsmen, furious at not having read him early enough or having misread him altogether.

What of the ‘chucker’ choir? Even a schoolboy fielder can explain that when throwing (as opposed to bowling) the last thing he wants is for the ball to pitch – it destroys accuracy.

As if pitching weren’t enough Murali’s wicked spin meant that the ball often pitched 1-1.5 feet away from the line of stumps.

The coin exercise here was for laughs. But Murali’s accuracy?

And his turn, the stuff of witchcraft.

Murali’s delivery usually kisses the ground first, where it’s supposed to lose its momentum, its menace, its caprice. What happens? The opposite – the ball fires up or down, away or toward, around or unbelievably through gloves, bat, pads and torso. It finds the stumps.

When he flights? It’s no different. He deceives, even in the air.

Forget about deliveries that hit the stumps. The ‘chucker’ choir haven’t explained why the most punishing batsmen just couldn’t score as freely off him as they could even off fearsome pacers. Most batsmen try and see pacers off but wet their boxes with excitement when they see spinners come on. They saw so much of Murali on the field, on TV replays, over so many years. Somehow they couldn’t bleed him as they could others.

Of eight bowlers in ODI history who were stretched by having to bowl over 14,000 deliveries only two others (Pollock, Akram) held an economy rate below 4.  

Of seven bowlers in Test history stretched with over 28,000 deliveries Murali is alone in holding his economy rate below 2.50, bowling average below 23, strike-rate below 56. The inimitable McGrath is the exception with an unholy economy of 2.49, an average of 21.64 and strike-rate of 52. But hold on. McGrath bowled nearly 15,000 fewer deliveries than Murali.

If you ‘threw’ to generate pace you wouldn’t delight in pitching, in flighting. But Murali did. He enjoyed drawing the bat out in an early arc that only he knew, the ball wouldn’t touch.

In Tests he has the most wickets taken ‘stumped’, the most wickets – nearly half his haul - ‘caught by a fielder’ and the most wickets (35) ‘caught & bowled’. His c&b haul tied with Kumble; Warne, Vettori a distant second with 21 each. In ODIs too he has the most wickets taken ‘stumped’, the most ‘caught & bowled’ and nearly half his haul, ‘caught by a fielder’.

How does chucking (as opposed to bowling) get you wickets so variedly?

Murali has scalped in every way, on every surface, against entire teams, in both the dominant formats, for a chastening two decades. And he’s ahead of a battalion of bowlers. How rude to call him a great ‘slow bowler’. He’s one of the greatest ever – left or right arm, slow or fast, Test or ODI.

Pedantic pundits are understandably bitter, still unable to fathom his genius. Perhaps it’s too much to ask those of us who’ve railed against him all along to abruptly now recant - suddenly coming ‘around’ the wicket after bowling ‘over’ all year.

Murali’s walk into the Hall of Fame won’t correct the terrible injustice he’s suffered. It may give some of us pause? It’s not the justice he deserves but it’s all he’ll get.