Muttiah Muralitharan Took 800 Test Wickets and 534 More in One-Day Cricket

Muttiah Muralitharan finished with 800 Test wickets and 534 in one-day internationals, and both are records. He is the only bowler to reach 800 in Tests; the next name on the list, Shane Warne, stopped at 708.

He took his wickets in 133 Tests at an average of 22.72, with 67 five-wicket hauls and 22 ten-wicket matches. Both of those are records too, and the five-wicket figure is not close: the next best is 37. His 800th wicket came off the final ball he ever bowled in Test cricket. He took ten or more in a match on 22 separate occasions, meaning he won Test matches essentially on his own more often than any bowler in the sport's history.

The workload behind those numbers is the part that gets lost. Sri Lanka rarely had a second frontline spinner, so Muralitharan bowled enormous spells, often forty or more overs in an innings, on surfaces that offered him nothing, against batting sides that could set themselves to survive him rather than score. The volume was not padding, it was the job description.

He also expanded what a finger spinner could do. The conventional off spinner turns the ball one way, so a left-hander plays him comfortably. Muralitharan developed the doosra, which spun the other direction out of an apparently identical action, and it meant no batsman could commit to a line against him. His wrist and elbow were unusual enough that his action was investigated repeatedly and cleared by biomechanical testing.

That testing is the standing objection, and it is the reason this debate is not settled. Some observers never accepted the results, and the record is asterisked in their minds regardless of what the science concluded. Shane Warne took 708 with a classical leg break, on the biggest stages, and won matches through the threat of the ball as much as the delivery. Among fast bowlers, Malcolm Marshall paired pace with control at a Test average under 21 that no modern quick has matched, and Wasim Akram invented reverse swing as a discipline.

Warne is the better answer if the question is artistry, and Marshall if it is fast bowling. On wickets taken, which is what a bowler is for, Muralitharan is ninety-two clear.

The verdict: Muralitharan for the wickets. Warne for the artistry. Marshall for the greatest quick.