Muttiah Muralitharan reaches 800 Test wickets

[Farmer Reil]

A stat I'd like to see is wickets taken either being bowled out, caught by the bowler or judged LBW. I.e, wickets purely down to the bowler, rather than run-outs and catches.

With the relative quality of the Sri Lankan and Aussie fielders, I'd reckon Muralitharan would come out looking even better.

[sahyder1]

Run Outs don't go towards a bowler's tally. I'll try to pull the LBW/bowled numbers in a bit though.

[Farmer Reil]

Yeah, I guess run-outs counting for the bowler's tally would be stupid, thinking about it. Thinking about things isn't something I do often.

[Dan McG]

Warne's got 138 wickets LBW, 116 bowled, 73 caught by the 'keeper and 36 stumped. Can't find caught-and-bowled stats, but I think those are the dismissals you can put down purely to the bowler.

Murali has 150 wickets leg before, 167 bowled, 47 caught by the wicketkeeper and 47 stumped.

Warne - 363 wickets

Murali - 411 wickets

I'm not convinced that its a fair argument though, as this doesn't take into account planned dismissals that are caught, things like bat pads and edges to slip, or even planning a boundary catch. I think the better way to compare is dismissals by batting position during a time period that is common to both player's careers.

Closed it off to both men between 1993 and 2007. This takes out both men's first few matches and Murali's matches against opposition Warne never bowled at. Then, I'm going to discount wickets of bowlers (8, 9, 10, 11).

Murali took 454 of his wickets (56.75) from 'specialist batsmen' (1-7), at an average of 32.63.

Warne took 440 of his wickets (62.14%) from the same positions, at an average of 32.72.

Interestingly, both men took significantly more wickets against right handers, with Murali averaging a touch OVER 30 against lefties. Warne's average against LHB's was 28.

If I were some kind of statsguru master, I'd remove matches against Australia, Sri Lanka, World XI, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh to even things up a bit. But then comes the quality of pitches. Cricket, despite there being so many different statistics out there, is such a hard game to compare players in.

My vote goes to Warne for his impact on the game. He was a celebrity everywhere he went, and he marketed cricket better, if you understand what I mean.

[Farmer Reil]

Oh, definitely in terms of marketing cricket and making the game accessible/interesting to more people, Warne all the way. People can spell his name, for a start. But to be fair, he doesn't come from Sri Lanka.

Name one other person, non involved with cricket, who's Sri-Lankan born and bred and is famous?

Yeah...

I don't think anyone will argue that Warne's celebrity status is way higher. But he comes from an English-speaking country (not only that but a hugely successful one as far as sport goes, especially the sport he plays). It's like comparing Johnny Wilkinson to Chris Patterson. They've both scored a lot of points (although admittedly the relative gap is higher between them than the two cricketers, AND Wilko has 20-odd fewer caps, Wilko has played Fly Half all his career. It's similar to if Warne was a wicket keeper for a bit). But since Patterson plays for a shit nation (sorry Scotland, "improving nation") who've never won anything major during his own career, and is ginger, he's not considered to be a 'face of rugby' like Johnny was for a while, even though in my opinion Patterson is the better player.

Edited July 25, 2010 by Farmer Reil

[gunnar hendershow]

Are you implying the Scots don't speak English?