The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Muttiah Muralitharan, 'the Don Bradman of bowlers'?

Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan: an underrated grate. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Roar Rookie
18th August, 2016
45

Steve Waugh once called Muralitharan (who enters the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame this year) ‘the Donald Bradman of bowlers’.

That’s well-meant, but misplaced.

Bradman was the greatest batsmen of his era – nothing less and importantly nothing more.

Enduring greatness that transcends epochs implies struggle against a) prolonged, b) intense, c) varying odds.

Statisticians love their stats. Obviously. But enduring greatness demands more. Not ‘tally’ alone but ‘test’.

Great batsmen test great bowlers: a maddeningly mutual causality.

Does Murali measure up?

Apparently.

Advertisement

Murali’s greatness flows from the greatness of those he outwitted. Names like Sachin, Lara, Ponting, Kallis, the Waughs, Hayden, Anwar, Gilchrist, Afridi, Hooper, Klusener, Cairns, Slater, Hick, Symonds, Sehwag and a multitude of other proven batsmen. If he’d bowled to lesser batsmen, his stats would awe us less – they must.

We measure bowlers and batsmen by a different order of stats but it’s the resistance they encounter – not stats alone – that decides greatness.

Does Bradman measure up?

Happily for Bradman, nearly 80 per cent of Test deliveries he faced were bowled by relatively ineffective Englishmen not his deadlier fellow Australians.

Australia’s Grimmett took an incredible 216 wickets from just 37 Tests. England’s Tate just 155 wickets from 39 Tests, Verity just 144 from 40 Tests, Edrich took an inexcusably paltry 41 from 39 Tests.

21-Test career: Australia’s Mailey took as many as 99 wickets, England’s Larwood only 78 wickets.

27-Test career: Australia’s O’Reilly took as many as 144 wickets, England’s Voce only 98 wickets.

Advertisement

Australian Lindwall’s 23.03 bowling average was from 61 Tests; Englishman Bedser’s 24.89, from 51 Tests.

We could go on.

MuraliTall

The most effective Bradman-era bowlers were on his team.

Murali?

Let’s just say, there were better sides than his. Every delivery was a ‘battle’ not just because of the ‘population’ of punishing batsmen. He had to offset relatively anaemic fellow-bowlers. Batsmen were used to hammering Sri Lankan bowlers – why would Murali be different? Well, he just was. Among the top 20 wicket-takers in Test history, he’s the only Sri Lankan.

Scary batting stats shouldn’t scare unless demonstrated over time, in different conditions, against bloody-minded bowlers. The reason Bradman’s average remains grossly misleading. Some 72 per cent of his Test runs were against a single team, nearly a third of his runs and over a third of his tons were against invertebrates South Africa, West Indies, India. None of these engagements could, in conscience, be called ‘battles’.

Advertisement

Austere bowling figures aren’t quite austere unless demonstrated over time, in different conditions, against prolific batsmen. And why Murali’s stats are about as real as it gets – distinction at one end because of distinction at the other.

Not what’s achieved (stats!) but against what odds.

The most dangerous bowlers were born after Bradman retired.

Unluckily for Murali, so were the most dangerous batsmen.

There’s the rub. As batsmen became more proven (than Bradman and his peers) so did bowlers – one’s excellence a virtue of the other’s.

As many as six Test bowlers have dismissed 11 batsmen over two innings. All post-War. Jim Laker in the 1950s, Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan in the 60s, Geoff Dymock in the 70s, Abdul Qadir in the 80s, Waqar Younis in the 90s and Murali in 2000. Post-War ‘ten-forer’ bowlers were a crowd. Bradman faced only one such rival (Bedser), the other ‘ten-forer’ wasn’t a rival but fellow-Australian Grimmett.

That’s a stark admission of bullied post-War batsmen and unmolested pre-War batsmen. Bodyline was not just brief, it was overblown.

Advertisement

Murali’s peers (Pollock, Akram, Donald, Lee, Younis, Warne, Ambrose, Walsh, McGrath) held their ‘get-out-of-here’ low bowling averages in the fiercest environment against the widest range of attacking batsmen, in grounds around the world. They sustained these averages over 100-130 Tests.

Bradman’s rivals had indefensibly high bowling averages over, shall we say, ‘fewer’ Tests – Bedser (average of 24.89 from just 51 Tests), Hedley Verity (24.37 from 40 Tests), Bill Voce (27.88 from 27 Tests), Harold Larwood (28.35 from a mere 21 Tests).

Murali held his staggeringly low bowling average of below 23 over a gruelling 133 Tests, against the most destructive, most versatile batsmen ever. That’s not counting wear-and-tear from a simultaneous 350 ODIs where he held his average infuriatingly, again at about 23!

England’s Bowes had an average of 22.33 but from a fleeting 15 Tests – a ‘stint’ all right but hardly a ‘career’ when considering Test history? Even comparing ‘stints’, Bradman had the better bowler – over a comparable 14 Tests, Australia’s Ironmonger held his average at 17.97.

It’s only after post-War rules kicked in that bowlers of Bradman’s era stood a less-than-guffawing chance of securing lbws. Too late! Bradman was nearly through most of his brief 50-Test career and had amassed most of his runs and tons.

Duncan Hamilton’s canonical account of pre-War cricket explains why Bradman-era bowlers struggled, even against mediocre batsmen.

For Bradman, it was barely a struggle let alone against prolonged, intense, varied odds.

Advertisement

No Goliath? No David.

The ‘Bradman’ epithet is unfair, to Murali. It unwittingly belittles the scale of his achievement because it ignores the savagery of his playing context.

It’s probably more accurate to call Murali ‘the Sachin Tendulkar of bowlers’. Like Sachin the batsman, Murali the bowler was tested the most. Unlike Bradman, Sachin was surrounded by batsmen ‘giants’ and towered above them. Like Sachin, Murali was surrounded by bowler ‘giants’ and dwarfed them. But even the ‘Sachin’ epithet is unfair because Murali was tested in ways that Sachin wasn’t – Murali’s very craft the subject of inquisition.

What irony that it was Bradman who understood Murali and paid him tribute. As Murali takes his rightful place in the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame, may we come to salute him as Bradman did.

Rudolph Lambert Fernandez is the author of ‘Greater than Bradman: celebrating Sachin, the greatest batsman in cricket history
Twitter: @RudolphFernandz

close