Murali finishes Test career with 800 wickets
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Muttiah-Muralitharan-c78157 will bow out of Test cricket with 800 wickets to his name, after claiming the two wickets he needed to reach the milestone in the final day’s play against India in Galle.
The Sri Lanka off-spinner had announced prior to the match that this would be his last in whites, telling the media he was retiring because “there is nothing left or any target to reach”.
For a bowler who has placed daylight between his own wicket-taking record and that of his nearest rival, retired leg-spinning great Shane Warne’s 708 Test scalps, it’s an understandable sentiment.
But as the preparations for the 38-year-old’s farewell got underway, there was one goal that was still within reach for Murali, and that was becoming the first bowler in Test history to take 800 wickets over the course of his career.
He entered the match needing just eight more wickets to do so.
When Sri Lanka’s 520-run first innings was finally declared on the third day of the match, Muralitharan got his chance to edge closer to writing his name in the record books one more time and made the most of it too, taking his 67th five-wicket haul of his Test career, playing a pivotal role in Sri Lanka’s dismissal of India for just 276.
The follow-on was then enforced, and at stumps on day four, Murali had taken six wickets for the match, leaving him two short of the magic number.
When play resumed on day five, Muralitharan’s doosra yielded him Test wicket number 799, as Harbhajan Singh was trapped on the pads for eight.
But with slinger Lasith Malinga proving dangerous in the second innings of his first Test cricket since December 2007 and taking a five-wicket haul of his own and India’s tail stubbornly digging in as they sought to spoil the party, that final wicket threatened to remained elusive for Murali.
Until, in the 45th over he’d sent down for the innings, and with fielders clustered around the batsman, Pragyan Ojha delivered the edge to Mahela Jayawardene at first slip as http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 were all out for 338, leaving Sri Lanka with a 95-run target to secure Muralitharan a winning end to his Test career.
It was a target http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758 chased down without the loss of a wicket, with Tillakaratne Dilshan sealing the victory with a six, as Murali's final Test adhered to the script to the end.
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