Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, one of the most controversial and accomplished figures in cricket, announced that the upcoming Test match against India in Galle, Sri Lanka, will be his last. Choosing to concentrate on the shorter formats of the game, Murali will walk away after 133 tests. His figures currently stand at a record 792 wickets, a best-innings return of 9/51, a best-match haul of 16/220, and an average of 22.71, with 66 five-wicket sets and 22 ten-wicket sets.
The figures, impressive, legendary and record-breaking as they are, tell only half the story. He holds the record for the most wickets in international Test & ODI cricket, has taken more five-fors than any other bowler in history, and was called the "best bowler ever" in the 2002 edition of the Wisden Cricketer's Almanac. Wisden also called him "the leading cricketer in the world" in 2006. He's taken a 5-for against every Test-playing country, and has taken 50 or more wickets against all of them - England, Australia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, South Africa, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. He's the only player to have taken 10 or more wickets in four consecutive games, and he's done that on two occasions. "b(owled) Muralitharan" is the most common dismissal in Test cricket. Matthew Hayden and Kevin Pietersen have singled out Murali as the toughest bowler they've faced.
For a cricket nation that lived under the shadow of India for nearly two and a half decades, Murali was one of the few players that put Sri Lanka on the cricketing map, and helped it stay there. Even though he didn't play an integral part in Sri Lanka's winning campaign in the 1996 World Cup, it was his then-captain Arjuna Ranatunga and coach Dav Whatmore who realized Murali's talent and developed him from a promising off-spinner into a guaranteed match-winner.
Yet there was always the controversy. Suspected of illegally throwing the ball as far back as 1993, and then officially called for doing so in 1995, Murali has always had to deal with the accusations that he cheats. Whether it's respected ex-players and commentators like Michael Holding or Bishan Singh Bedi, or the crowds that would chant "no-ball" whenever he marked his run-up, his whiplash bowling action and wicked turn has sullied what is otherwise an exemplary international record. It took a dozen rigorous scientific tests and studies to exonerate Murali; despite this, and the comments of Sir Donald Bradman and Steve Waugh (who compared him to Bradman) in support of Murali, his detractors have not waned (with the exception of Michael Holding, who reversed his position upon seeing the scientific evidence in favor of Murali).
I think that if Murali had been legitimately cheating, his career would have fizzed out a long time ago. But such is the depth of the man's talent and skill that he has gone from strength to strength. He's remained Sri Lanka's go-to guy with the ball, has turned matches for them, and has been a force to be reckoned with, even in defeat. With his understudy Ajantha Mendis and Suraj Randiv and Jeevan Mendis in the wings to replace him, Murali frees himself up to concentrate his efforts on the shorter formats of the game, with the 2011 World Cup a primary objective. Until then, however, batsmen and opposing captains will breathe a sigh of relief that the one man who constantly bamboozled and beguiled them, arms flapping and dinner-plate eyes wide, will hang up his Test cap and leave a record that will probably never be matched.