One of the most memorable moments in my life of watching cricket did not take place during a match, and involved a doctor. About four years ago, Dr Mandeep Dhillon walked over to Muttiah Muralitharan and strapped a brace around his elbow. The brace was constructed of steel rods held in place by heat-moulded plastic. It was clearly impossible to bend your arm once that brace was strapped on - and therefore to straighten it.
In a documentary shot by Channel 4 and re-enacted by ESPN-Star, Murali wore the brace, walked up to his bowling mark, and bowled the three different kinds of deliveries in his arsenal - including the dreaded doosra. In each case, the ball turned as you would normally expect. And in each case, despite having the brace on, it appeared to the naked eye that Murali was chucking.
The documentary was an eye-opener for me - and many others, I would imagine - because it clearly showed that Murali's appearing to chuck the ball was an optical illusion - he couldn't possibly have been doing it with the brace on. Besides this experiment, it also showed two other things: One, Murali's bowling arm, because of a birth defect, does not straighten completely, and thus it appears to an observer, seeing a slightly bent arm whir into action, that he might be chucking. Also, his shoulder joint rotates abnormally on its axis, generating a momentum that, to a naked eye, appears to be a result of straightening the arm.
But Dr Dhillon's elbow brace proved that day that Murali does not chuck.
Why do I remember this now? Well, with all the hype around young Ajantha Mendis, and all the focus on the Indian middle-order batsmen who have defined a generation of Indian cricket, we have taken Murali for granted. He is such a joy to watch when he bowls: In his 16 years in international cricket, he has been both stock bowler and strike bowler for his side, combining long spells with a matchwinning ability to pick up wickets. He is playing now in his 122nd Test, and has taken almost 750 wickets: that's 6.14 wickets per Test. By almost every credible statistical yardstick, he is the greatest bowler of all time.
That's right, the greatest.
Cricket writers love to make lists, and I remember an international cricket magazine, a few years ago, asked a few cricketers and writers to list down the greatest spinners ever. The name that featured most prominently was that of Shane Warne. A few people mentioned Murali in their write-ups, but wrote that with the question marks around his bowling action, they were loath to celebrate him yet.
Perhaps for that reason, when Wisden drew up a list of the top five players of the last century, Warne was among them, and Murali wasn't. (Disclosure: I was once employed by the Wisden group.)
Those question marks have since disappeared, in part due to Dr Dhillon's experiment. But many of us still hesitate to accord Murali his rightful place in cricket's pantheon. If we make a statistical comparison, Murali beats Warne by any measure I think of. Murali has taken 748 wickets and is playing his 122nd Test as I write this; Warne took 708 in 145. Murali averages 22, Warne averages 25. Murali's strike rate is 54, Warne's is 57. (This figure somewhat negates the criticism that Murali got more opportunities to take wickets because his team rarely had other strike bowlers.)
But the figure that I find most telling is this one: before the ongoing Test at Galle, Murali had taken 80 wickets in 17 Tests against India at 29.73; Warne took 43 wickets in 14 Tests at 47.18. The hardest Test for a spin bowler, for a quite a while, was to bowl to Indian batsmen who had grown up against spin. We mastered Warne - hell, even Vinod Kambli tonked him around - but I can't think of a single Indian batsman who has consistently handled Murali with such ease.
My case is not that Warne is unworthy of the praise heaped on him: if I were to draw up an all-time World XI, I would unhesitatingly pick Warne, and even consider making him captain. But I would pick Murali ahead of him, for his art that we still cannot fully fathom, and the character and discipline he has shown is staying at the top of his game for a decade and a half.
Finally, before ending this piece, here's a point to ponder: If Shane Warne was Sri Lankan and Muttiah Muralitharan was a blue-eyed, blonde Aussie, do you think their fellow cricketers and the media would have regarded them differently?
Amit Varma writes the blog India Uncut.