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Muttiah Muralitharan

Notes from conversations with Sir Donald Bradman between 1995 and 1998 on the world’s greatest cricketers:

“Murali, for me, shows perhaps the highest disipline of any spin bowler since the war. He holds all the guile of the trade, but something else too. His slight stature masked a prodigious talent, and what a boon he has been for cricket’s development on the subcontinent.

“It is with this in mind, and with the games need to engage as a world sport, that I found umpire Darrell Hare’s calling of Murali so distasteful. It was technically impossible for Umpire Hare to call Murali from the bowler’s end, even once! Why was his eye not on the foot-fall and crease?

“I believe Hare’s action – in one over – took the development of world cricket back by ten years. For me, this was the worst example of umpiring that I have witnessed, and against everything the game stands for.

“Clearly Murali does not throw the ball. No effort in that direction is made or implied by him. His every effort is to direct the ball unto the batsman in the prescribed way, and his every effort - is to deceive the batsman! Murali wants to bamboozle, to trick, through flight and change of pace.

“That through this ordeal he has remained both composed and modest rings further truth in his favour.

“His is the stuff of our greatest slow bowlers, and for me, Murali is one, like O’Reilly, Warne or Trumble; who are game-breakers. They detect and then imagine the batsman’s weakness, perhaps in an over or two. What a weapon for any captain. To have the discipline to contain, and then, bamboozle!”

Recorded by Tom Thompson, Bradman’s Publisher (1994-2001)

ggumques@nsw.bigpond.net.au