It was as if he had written the script for his swansong himself. After seeing him bowl 23 fruitless overs to go from 799 to 800 wickets, the spectators who had filled the Galle International Stadium to the brim were restless, the water-bearing dark clouds that had washed off the entire Day Two were threatening, and Muttiah Muralitharan had begun to grow tired.
Finally the 800th came — a wicket off the last of the 44,039 balls he bowled in Tests. And then the Sri Lankan off-spinner walked off into the sunset sporting a wide grin on his face — just like in the good ol’ spaghetti westerns.
“I have been part of many victories nothing more is left for me to achieve,” a content Muralitharan said in Galle on Thursday. “The idea here was to perform well, win the Test and end on a high.”
It seemed like a fitting finale to an illustrious career spanning 18 years, but a quick check of the dwindling spin stocks would tell you that while this is a happy ending for him, it most certainly isn’t for cricket. He was the last and possibly the most lethal of the three greatest spinners to have graced the game in the last two decades.
Like with the spin legends Shane Warne and Anil Kumble, there is no “Murali” school of bowling and no successor who can bowl in his unique rubber-wristed style. The one closest to him at least in numbers and still playing — Harbhajan Singh— is still so far behind with 355 wickets, that at his current strike-rate and average number of overs per Test, he’ll need to play another 105 matches to surpass Murali. New Zealand captain, Daniel Vettori, on 325 is even further behind.
There are those who are trying to convince Murali to keep going, possibly fuelled by the temptation to see him take 1,000 wickets, but more because they just don’t want a good thing to end.
But Test cricket’s most successful bowler is 38, and even if the spirit is willing there is only so much a body can do.
“I cannot take the load of Test cricket anymore. My knee starts to hurt and the shoulder becomes stiff. What more can I get from continuing — like I wouldn’t have felt bad had I not got to 800,” he said.
Murali’s name was etched in the history books long before Thursday, and it wouldn’t have mattered whether he was able to take Pragyan Ojha’s scalp or not. Numbers do not possess the psyche of great men, victories do. It’s the mortals that need numbers to quantify achievements.
“When he was on 799 wickets, I couldn’t believe he was trying his best to run out the last two batsman. It just goes to show what kind of a person he is: Fearless and at ease,” says India’s legendary offie Erapalli Prasanna.
Future plans
Murali’s achievements on the field, laudable as they are, pale in comparison to the work he does off it. Unlike some cricketers, who lend their names to causes, or occasionally donate a bat or a ball to raise money through charity auctions, Murali has actually given his own money to development projects.
He, along with manager Kushil Gunasekara, established the Foundation of Goodness, a charity organisation, in the early 2000s. And when the tsunami devastated Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, Murali organised three convoys of 10 trucks each, paying for these himself, to get food to people who needed it. He persuaded those who could to donate clothes, and supervised the delivery himself.
During the hard work of rehabilitation in the tsunami’s aftermath, cement was in short supply. Murali promptly signed an endorsement deal with Lafarge, a global cement giant, that was a straight barter, where cement would be supplied to the Foundation for Goodness in exchange for work Murali did.
A few years back when someone asked Murali if it was not traumatic to repeatedly have his action questioned and be called a cheat despite being cleared by the authorities, he said: “I got no-balled, but I’m still alive. There is life beyond cricket.”
That, in one sentence, tells you pretty much all you need to know about the little man. Cricket will be poorer for his absence and the game’s followers will miss him sorely. But this isn’t the end — Murali’s second innings has just begun.