27.11.07
The Times - How England can avoid falling under the spell of Muralitharan the magician
Sometime in the first Test that starts in Kandy on Saturday, I expect Muttiah Muralitharan to take the five wickets he needs to go past my world record of 708 Test victims. Hopefully, England will make him work for them, but once I retired, I knew it was only a matter of time before Murali passed me. In fact, I think he will reach the magical figure of 1,000 wickets.
As I look back, I am happy I got to be top of the tree for three or four years, but of more importance to me is the way you play the game. I am very comfortable with the way I played it and what I achieved. It was so much more than I expected to do when I started out on my career.
Without doubt, Murali has been one of the best bowlers to have graced the game.
Sure, he has picked up a lot of wickets against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, but he can only get out the batsmen who are put in front of him and his record against England has been impressive. They have not played him very well and shortly I am going to offer a few tips to the present England batsmen.
One of Murali’s great skills is the pressure he puts on you at the start of your innings -the first ten balls you get from him are really hard. It is not just the sharp turn he gets, but his bounce and dip on the ball, not to mention his control. Then there is his doosra. Once I got in, I found I could pick it, but many cannot.
The way England must play him in the forthcoming series was shown by the Australia batsmen in the two Tests we have just had against Sri Lanka in Brisbane and Hobart. I thought our guys, in particular Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey, batted superbly against him. You must try, wherever possible, to get forward to him rather than back. You have got to be aggressive and use your feet against him. In my view, the better the bowler, the more aggressive you have to be. If not, he will produce enough balls with your name on them.
There is one thing that Murali isn’t and that’s patient. If things aren’t going for him, he will bowl faster and faster and set more defensive fields. Clarke’s quick use of his feet against him was brilliant -in the last over before lunch one day in Brisbane, he twice came down the pitch and hit him back over his head for six.
Although, Murali got only four wickets in those two Tests, which were played on good pitches for a spinner to bowl on because there was turn and bounce, I thought he bowled as well as he could have done. It was just that our guys batted so well against him. England must have a good look at the highlights and see how we played him. Don’t, for example, try to sweep Murali unless it is a slog-sweep to cow corner rather than square, because he gets so much dip and bounce.
England must try to make sure that their openers do not get out early -then they will be set when Murali comes on. He finds it harder against left-handers, so Alastair Cook, as the only leftie in the England side, has an important part to play. Phil Jaques, our left-handed opener who made hundreds in Brisbane and Hobart, had 30 or 40 on the board when Murali got the ball. If a team are two or three down when he is introduced into the attack, his job is so much easier. The other thing we did not allow him to do was get a bowl at our tail because he cleans up nine, ten, jack for fun.
Although I am sure Sri Lanka will play better against England because they are at home, they played pretty poorly against us. They just didn’t perform. In what was their first Test series since the retirement of Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and me, Australia were impressive. Mitchell Johnson challenged Brett Lee as the fastest bowler in the side, Jaques filled in at the top of the order extremely well and Clarke, who has really matured, was the pick of the batsmen against Murali.
Stuey MacGill struggled, but he was coming off surgery in early October and I’m sure he’ll be fine by Boxing Day, when the series against India starts.
I think India will challenge Australia more than Sri Lanka did. Melbourne, where we have won our past eight Tests, will be a tough place for India to start, but the toss will be crucial in Sydney and Adelaide. I couldn’t have got my eight-year-old son, Jackson, out when it was so flat on the first two days against England in Adelaide last December.