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Murali the untouchable

At the end of day one in the test match in progress between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe the milestone was reached. Muttiah Muralitharan drew level with Courteny Walsh on 519 wickets to be on the threshold of becoming the world record holder for the most number of wickets.

Last year at the "Cricketer of the Year" awards presentation held in India Shane Warne mentioned on stage that he expected Muralitharan to finish his career taking more than one thousand wickets! He meant it too because he analysed Murali's age and the possible number of tests he would play in eight years or so and the end result. It sounded pretty logical. The champion is now at his peak. Although he bowls his quantity of overs miserly in one day cricket, it is in the test arena that he is at his lethal.

Muralitharan revels in bowling long spells. He doesn't tire, he doesn't stiffen up, he doesn't lose the rhythm and most importantly his concentration levels rarely drop. In all those aspects he is so naturally gifted.

So too the bowling action. It is unique. Many youngsters, around the world now, attempt to bowl like him. There is and never will be another who could ape him. Bits and pieces can be adopted but never the whole action. It is the flexible wrist that does most of the work. All the spin comes out of the wrist. Again a natural gift.

However, all through his career of a decade or so, these natural talents have been questioned. There is no doubt the elbow bends at a certain point of delivery. The extent of the straightening is what matters.

On the 1995 - 96 tour to Australia the issue erupted. The rule then was that umpires could "no ball", if they felt the action of a bowler is illegal, should their naked eye convince them. Now that has changed. The ICC has appointed a sub-committee comprising of former international players who quite rightly feel that should a player come through the ranks to play for his country he should have been scrutinised sufficiently not to be called on the field. This has led to the research stage.

All the test playing nations have agreed to the degree a bent arm could be straightened for spin, medium pace and pace. It is expected that the pace men would be the bowlers who would benefit most from straightening a bent elbow and genuine swing bowlers much less. Finger spinners will get more purchase as an end result. In my opinion the 10° allowance given to pace men is far too much and the 5° allowance given to spinners is inadequate.

Now Muralitharan faces the next issue after breaking the world record. How he will get over bowling the doosra for him to change his action will be a tough ask. Simply because the mechanism is all natural. He could explore some light adjustments, which may work. In fact he could survive on the off break alone. He will still trouble batsmen and he will still pick-up bags of wickets by bowling the off break alone. An alternate delivery for variation is the leg break.

With so much flexibility in the wrist bowling the leg break is no difficulty for him. Maybe that's the next step. It would be another challenge.

Whatever said and done he must go on entertaining. He is one of the game's great entertainers. He must be given all the assistance to carry on with the artistic acts he performs.

Now that Shane Warne is back in the game and hungry for success the contest for the top berth will be a constant see-sawing battle. It is impossible to separate the two. They are wizards of the spin bowling art.

Right now Warne takes a break from international circles. Murali is at the top of the pile and he's untouchable.

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