Buzzin Cricket

muttiah muralitharan - 800 test wickets

Sri Lanka off spinner Muttiah Muralitharan became the first bowler to claim eight hundred wickets in Test matches, taking 5 for 63 in the first innings and adding 3 for 128 in the second innings of the first of three Test matches against India.

Having confirmed that this series will be his last Test matches for Sri Lanka, Muralitharan started the game already holding the record for wickets taken in Test matches with 792.

The 800 wicket milestone was reached in only 134 Test matches and will surely overshadow the heavy defeat inflicted on India who were forced to follow on and ended losing the match by 10 wickets.

Thirty eight year old Muralitharan will continue to torment the Indian team during the next two Test matches after which he will retire from the long game claiming that after 19 years of international bowling he is ‘getting tired and getting old’ adding, “There are a lot of good spinners waiting for their chance, and hopefully they can become like me one day.”

The bowler whose unique bent arm bowling action, caused by a defect at birth, has courted controversy over the years and led Australia’s Prime Minister Jon Howard at one time calling the Sri Lankan a ‘chucker’, a comment that he later apologised for.

Indeed it was Australian spinner Shane Warne who fought hardest with Muralitharan to claim the title of Test cricket’s leading wicket taker, but even when Warne retired, his 708 wicket haul required 145 Test matches to be acheived.

Muralitharan passed that number in 2007 taking his 709th wicket against England when his bowling claimed Paul Collingwood on the bowlers home ground in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

But the world has not seen the last of the King of Spin, he will continue to play limited overs cricket at international level and is almost certain to be involved in next spring’s World Cup which will take place in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.