da esport bet： The captivating confectioners son is back in business
da bwin： Charlie Austin03-Sep-2001The captivating confectioners son is back in business. Earlier in the year,hill country off spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan, was padded into submissionby Duncan Fletcher’s pragmatic England, but against India’s normallyspin-assured batsmen he wreaked havoc, to win Sri Lanka’s first home seriesfor two years.Muttiah Muralitharan Muralitharan is such an astonishing bowler that his 14 wickets in threeEngland Tests was considered a failure, even if he was hobbling in to bowloff one leg, having not yet fully recovered from a groin injury.He then traveled to England for a six-game fling with Lancashire, where hetook 45 wickets, 21 less than he took in the same number of games in 1999.People whispered: Is Sri Lanka’s brightest star waning? Has he finally beenworked out after being chronically over-bowled?No, no, no, is the emphatic answer. Even superman has his off days andMuralitharan is shining bright as ever after 23 Test wickets in the threematch series. He now has 340 wickets in just 65 games. Watch out Courtney,Murali’s catching. Indeed, at his current rate of wicket taking, with thehigh number of Tests scheduled for the next two years, he will overhaulWalsh’s world record 519 wickets sometime in 2003, at the still tender ageof 31.Superlatives are thrown at him like confetti and the English Dictionary is shortof appropriate adjectives. Coach Dav Whatmore struggled to sum up his matchwinning eight wicket burst on the first day of the decisive Colombo Test:”He was incredible. Words fail me. The pitch didn’t hold any demons, but heconsistently beat the Indian batsmen in the air and off the pitch for fivestraight hours. He is an out-an-out champion.”Indian coach John Wright complained afterwards about his sides poor fitness,fielding and running between wickets, but he admitted that the batsmen werefaced with the cricketing equivalent of Mt. Everest: “There were some softdismissals in the first innings, but playing Muralitharan is very bigchallenge. He is without peer at the moment.”The contest between the Aussie-slayer Harbhajan Singh and Muralitharan wasbilled beforehand as the great contest, a potential Bollywood classic of thefuture. It turned out to be embarrassingly one-sided, with Harbhajan takingjust four wickets to Muralitharan’s 23. In fact, Harbhajan caused fewerproblems and took fewer wickets than England’s non-turning off spinnerRobert Croft in March. It’s now being billed as “the contest that neverwas,” but it still decided the series.There has been much talk about the growing potency of Sri Lanka’s supportbowlers, but the fact remains that, without Muralitharan, Sri Lanka would nothave won the series. He was the major difference between the two sides,setting up the chance for Sri Lanka to win in Colombo. One wonders what SriLanka would have scored if he had been bowling for India.No, Muralitharan is a class act. Perhaps he is the perfect bowler. He isunfailingly accurate, has seemingly limitless reserves of stamina, and ahandful of well-oiled tricks. He bowls three basic deliveries: the offbreak, top spinner and floater, which straightens after pitching, but whenyou throw in changes of pace, trajectory, loop and fizz, you have anunfathomable assortment of variations.Sri Lankan wicket Kumar Sangakkara has spent hours keeping and batting toMuralitharan in the nets, but even he admits to occasional moments with thegloves, when he has been left stranded by a subtle change in his uniquerubber-like wrist action.Players have adopted various different ploys to counter him, ranging fromgung-ho assaults to monotonous padding, but the most commonly used by theright handers is to move outside off stump and work him to leg for frequentsingles. Rahul Dravid, who largely adheres to this school, warned hisright-handed colleagues early on in the tour that their best chance ofsurvival was to forget scoring on the off side completely.Steve Waugh claims, in his book `Never Satisified’, that: “The key revolvesaround surviving the first 20 minutes or so, when the adjustment period isbeing negotiated. The use of the front pad is crucial as you can’t be givenout lbw if you get forward, because his extreme turn is always goping toleave the umpire with an element of doubt.”Sourav Ganguly, whose controversial first innings dismissal in Colombo wasthe first time he been dismissed by Muralitharan, revealed his strategyafter the game, arguing that left handers best chance is to force him tobowl short by using your feet and warning that: “You cannot let him settledown. If you defend and let him bowl where he wants to then it’s just amatter of time before he gets you.”No ploy is infallible and it seems that the greatest threat to Muralitharanbeing the highest ever wicket taker in the game is injury. Indeed, hisunusually aggressive style of spin bowling in general and delivery stride inparticular, which television crews complain is so energetic that it cancreate problems with the stump camera, creates the potential for wear andtear on his joints.He is though tremendously diligent with his fitness and, unlike Shane Warne,is not tempted by a diet of pizza, Fosters and cigarettes. His is alsofortunate to having had Alex Kontouri as his physio for nearly six years,which is an important reason why he has only missed a handful of matches inhis nine-year career, the latest being the Centurion Test in South Africa,when he pulled his groin.There are no signs yet either that the 29-year-old is considering a quieterlife managing his snack manufacturing company. He is invariably the firstinto the nets and the last to leave, often following national trainingsessions with another bowling stint with his domestic club Tamil Union. Lesstalented players would be ridiculed for such boyish keenness.No matter what the future holds, however, Muralitharan’s legacy, includingthe controversy over his bowling action, which still rumbles on quietly, issure to live on for generations to come, because no one has bowled off spinmore potently.
