17 July 2007

Warne or Muralitharan?

The Sunday Times suggested that Murali has had a little bit of help in getting to 700 wickets by playing the lesser ranked nations 23 times and taking 163 wickets against them (Bangladesh and Zimbabwe) versus Warne's 17 wickets in 3. The argument seems pretty water tight. But we should remember that Murali hasn't played anywhere near as many games as Warne yet either so he still has plenty of time to take more wickets than Warne in the same number of games, even discounting wickets taken against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

Not wanting to leave any stone unturned Cricket Burble wants to find out what you think, so vote for who is/was the better bowler above.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am certainly not a fan of Murali but we must also take into account that he normally appears in the 10th over of a Test and wheels away for hours. Warne on the other hand has to wait behind McGrath and Lee and Gillespie over the years and often not come on to bowl until the 50th over. So when we talk about games played we must also consider overs bowled.

Warne 145 Tests 40705 Balls (280)
Murali 113 Tests 37382 Balls (330)

On average Murali will bowl an extra 8 overs per test played than Warne has. By the time Murali reaches 145 Tests he will have bowled significantly more balls than Warne.

In my opinion there is no argument who is the best spinner of all time and he is not Sri Lankan. Warne is a joy to watch even though i am English and i have loved seeing his variation and mastery of his art.

Ed said...

Fair comment!