The International Cricket Thread

[cdbearsfan]

Jimmy has been brilliant, but it still feels right that Warne is top of the list, to me.

[Monty]

Jimmy has been brilliant, but it still feels right that Warne is top of the list, to me.

Take it you're a Murali Truther?

[cdbearsfan]

Oh is he top? I took it from posts above that Warne was. I think Warne still better, he played a much lower percentage of his tests on spin-friendly wickets. Always thought Murali action was fine but Malinga was a massive cheat.

[Monty]

Ah fair enough! No it's Murali with 800 flat, I think.

[Villan For Life]

The top three test wicket takers are:

Murali 800 wickets in 133 tests
Warne 708 wickets in 145 tests
Jimmy 703 wickets in 188 tests

[paul_e]

Murali is always a difficult one for me because there are 2 simple truths about him, his action was legal and most of what made him special was a result of his action.

I don't dislike him but it terms of skill Warne and Anderson stand at the pinnacle for me and Murali is the oddball who is up there because by sheer freak chance he came through in a county at time where his action that would normally have seen him out of the professional game was supported to instead make him the most unreadable bowler ever.

[Monty]

I think the main asterisk against Murali is that he was always an enormous percentage of the overs and wickets in a team that didn't win all that often - namely, he's getting a lot of 8-150 and the like. Warne had McGrath down the other end, Gillespie in his prime, Brett Lee even. I like Chaminda Vaas, but he's not that level.

[LeeB]

The nature of test cricket means bowlers success owes much to the quality of the others they play with, creating pressure for each other.

[Villan For Life]

I think the main asterisk against Murali is that he was always an enormous percentage of the overs and wickets in a team that didn't win all that often - namely, he's getting a lot of 8-150 and the like. Warne had McGrath down the other end, Gillespie in his prime, Brett Lee even. I like Chaminda Vaas, but he's not that level.

I think Sri Lanka were a better all round team than you give them credit for. They had some remarkable batsmen and a varied, well balanced attack. The Aussies had many world class players but Sri Lanka were a quality team.

Surprisingly Murali bowled around 3,300 more balls than Warne, which is 555-ish overs. Split that over 133 tests it’s around 4 overs more per test.

Their strike/economy rates are similar too and there’s an interesting split between batsman dismissed by position in the order here

https://howstat.com//cricket/Statistics/Bowling/BowlingAggregates.asp?Stat=1

[Monty]

They had absolutely wonderful batsmen, perhaps my favourite batting line-up of my lifetime. They just didn't have a huge variety of weapons to bowl teams out, especially abroad.

[PaulWinch again]

That Sri Lanka side was terrific.

[Monty]

Good contest today!

[PaulWinch again]

Really pleased to see Windoes giving a good account of themselves.

[Stu]

Hodge gone for 120 lbw off Woakes. Great knock and the windies have done well

[PaulWinch again]

Wood potentially injured.