View Single Post
  #40  
Old June 12, 2013, 02:09 AM
Gowza Gowza is offline
Cricket Guru
 
Join Date: July 15, 2007
Location: Australia
Favorite Player: Mike Procter
Posts: 12,273

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigers_eye
You kidding me? McGrath and co. took out most of the best players of the other nations (top order). It is easier when the weight of a nation is not on you. All you have to do is sustain the pressure that the quicks have already created. Whereas, Murali's bowling partners was laughable before Vass came. Even then Vass is not in the class of McGrath and co. McGrath and co didn't steal any wickets from Warne. More like made it easy for him to get more wickets. Murali on the other hand, for many matches didn't bowl in the second innings just like Shakib.

Warne is a once in a life time player for a nation. Murali is once in a life time player for the entire cricket world.
warne is one of the greatest cricketers, murali possibly the greatest spinner. you have to remember with warne that you also get his catching and his batting.

as far as warne getting help, murali having it tougher. it goes both ways, warne had less chance to get more wickets, murali didn't have that issue, but also as you said warne got a bit of help whereas murali didn't.

something else to add, someone once made up graphs of quite a lot of bowlers which showed the % of how many top order, middle order and tail end wickets they got. for warne 23% of his wickets were top order, murali was 25.3%. warne middle order wickets were 39.8%, murali 42.3%. for lower order wickets warne was at 37.1%, murali 32.5%.

so as you can the difference in top order/middle order wickets wasn't that big of a difference considering that murali supposedly had no one to take those top order wickets whereas warne did. that sort of difference can be put down to the fact that warne had more competition for top/middle order wickets than murali, that's why his numbers in that regard are slightly lower than murali's. also consider murali was probably brought in earlier in the innings a lot more often than warne was due to murali's pace attack not being quite as good therefore murali would have got to bowl against top/middle orders more often thus why his numbers are slightly better against them as he got to have a go at them more often.

there really isn't that much of a gap between murali and warne when you consider the respective situations, and i think that's why so many people pick warne ahead of murali because the difference in bowling is so small it comes down to other factors such as fielding and batting.
__________________
All Time Test XI: 1 Hobbs 2 B.Richards 3 Bradman 4 Kohli 5 V.Richards 6 Sobers 7 Gilchrist 8 Miller 9 Procter 10 Marshall 11 Warne
Reply With Quote