WITH Shane Warne of Australia joining, and not overtaking, Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka at the top of the list of leading Test bowlers, the likelihood is that he may perhaps never be the sole leader of the elite pack. Murali is scheduled to be active on the Test scene much earlier than Warne, and certainly has the potential to use that opportunity to generate a comfortable buffer between him and the rival. And with age being on Murali’s side, Warne will either have to do something miraculous, or, by the same token, hope for Murali doing something self-destructive, to take the mantle.
What Warne said after the match while comparing his achievement with Murali’s, I think, was in bad taste. It was a clear bid to belittle Murali’s effort to say that Murali had bowled for better part of his professional life on wickets conducive to spin bowling. Naturally, Murali does not play alone on such wickets. There are always other spinners making use of the same wicket at the same time as Murali, but do not quite extract the life, the turn and the bounce that Murali does as a matter of routine. But had Warne not chosen to utter that rubbish, he would not have been a true Australian. So we shall better leave it at that.
Among the top twenty-five names on the elite list who have all taken more than two hundred and fifty wickets, there are only five-and-a-half spinners. Apart from Murali and Warne, there are Bishen Bedi and Anil Kumble of India, and Lance Gibbs of the West Indies to complete the ‘five’, with Englishman Derek Underwood providing the ‘half’ part of the equation. I say ‘half’ not in derogatory terms, because Underwood was a deadly bowler in his own right, especially on wet English pitches. I say ‘half’ because whether or not to describe him as a spinner is a matter of individual perception. He was a cross between a spinner and a medium pacer, who could vary his length and pace accordingly.
So, that gives us five-and-a-half spinners in the top twenty-five, or some twenty-two per cent representation. In that context, the fact that the top two happen to spinners appear to be against the run of play. However, the likelihood is that the equation would remain unchanged for some time to come.
Among the twenty-five that we are discussing, there are only six who are still active; Murali, Warne, McGrath, Kumble, Shaun Pollock and Chaminda Vaas. Of the three pacemen, McGrath is about a hundred wickets behind the leaders, and, with his age and fitness on the wrong side of the equation, may never be a threat. Vass is more than two hundred and fifty wickets behind, and we may rule him out without much of a fuss. That leaves us with Pollock. He has the age, the fitness and the potential to unsettle the leaders, but he is a good couple of hundred wickets shy of the target yet.
We will have to wait and see, but it is going to be a long wait, and an uncertain one as well. Uncertain, because Murali and Pollock are almost of the same age, and by the looks of it, by the time Pollock displaces Warne — if he ever does — Murali will perhaps be touching the 750 mark!
It is somewhat disappointing that Pakistani, which has been one of the traditional spinning powerhouses, has only two spinners named among the top fifty of the game: leg-spinner Abdul Qadir is 32nd on the list with 236 wickets, and Saqlain Mushtaq is at the 40th with 208 scalps. I guess it could, and should, have been slightly better.
WITH Shane Warne of Australia joining, and not overtaking, Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka at the top of the list of leading Test bowlers, the likelihood is that he may perhaps never be the sole leader of the elite pack. Murali is scheduled to be active on the Test scene much earlier than Warne, and certainly has the potential to use that opportunity to generate a comfortable buffer between him and the rival. And with age being on Murali’s side, Warne will either have to do something miraculous, or, by the same token, hope for Murali doing something self-destructive, to take the mantle.
