From bigstarcricket.com Guest Blogger By Nalin Abeysekera, Sri Lanka Murali becomes world champion...it was a special moment in Sri Lanka cricket! There is no bowler within sight who can even get close to Murali. He has capacity to go for many more years and get wickets for his motherland. His contribution has been so significant in the success story of Sri Lankan cricket. As a person he is always positive towards competition and towards his team. He is every inch a team player and in many ways his unselfish attitude would contribute against his personal performance. This is a small comparison between Murali and Sir Donald Bradman - the all-time best batsman in Test cricket: Bradman (1928-1948) played 52 Test matches in his career, scored 29 (55.76%) hundreds and 12 double hundreds (23%). Up to now Murali has played 118 Test matches, has taken five wickets in an innings 62 times (52.54%) and ten wickets in a match on 20 occasions (16.94%). Bradman and Murali always performed well against England. Bradman scored highest runs in his career of 5,028 against England while Murali also took 112 wickets (his best against any opponent) against England. Bradman scored 4,322 of his total 6,996 runs at home averaging 61.78% runs at home. While Murali took 451 wickets of his total 723 wickets at home. His average wicket taking at home was 62.37%. By looking at this Murali can be classed as an equal to the performance of Bradman. In the spinning department still it is Muralitharan who is the legend and match-winning bowler. He can bowl for the next five years too. According to the statistics and marvellous performance it is quite clear that he could become one of the top cricketers in in the 21st century. He has many rights to claim this award. © Copyright bigstarcricket.com |