There is something about the plaudits about Shane Warne becoming the leading wicket-taker in test cricket that I don’t like.<br /><br />1 – He’s not going to have the record very long. As soon as Muralitharan gets a good run, he’ll get the record back. This ping-pong between the two could get tiresome. Do we have to salute both men each time the record changes hands? Yawn.<br /><br />2 – He is a horrid sex-pest drugs-cheat. Warne has a nasty track record. Perhaps he was just misrepresented, but too many stories about him have come out without there being something a bit dark underneath. And the whole “my mum gave me a diuretic by mistake” sham was a sorry excuse for failing a drugs test. He was fast-tracking himself back from injury. But drugs are no way to do it.<br /><br />3 – All the claims that he “reinvented the art of legspin bowling” are, as far as I can tell, nonsense. He is an excellent bowler, of course, but reinventing is a stupid term. He just does it very well.<br /><br />What you can’t deny are his superb figures, which are actually very similar to Murali’s. The problem is, we are looking at a “chucker” vs a drugs cheat. Pity there isn’t a nicer story in there somewhere.<br /><br />Name Mat Balls M R W Ave Best 5 10 SR Econ Team<br /><br />SK Warne 114 31850 1492 13743 537 25.59 8-71 28 8 59.7 2.56 AUS<br />M Muralitharan 91 31124 1380 12165 532 22.86 9-51 44 13 58.5 2.34 SL<br />(stats from <a href=”http://www.cricinfo.com/db/STATS/TESTS/BOWLING/TEST_BOWL_MOST_WKTS.html” target=_new>Cricinfo</a>)
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