Muttiah Muralitharan

Deshabandu Muttiah Muralitharan, born on 17 April 1972, works as a cricket coach and businessman in Sri Lanka and formerly played the sport professionally. His Test-match average of more than six wickets per game places him among the sport’s all-time greats. No other bowler has claimed 800 Test wickets or over 530 ODI wickets, and his overall international wicket tally remains the highest of any bowler. He was part of the Sri Lankan side that won the 1996 Cricket World Cup and the team that shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with India. His bowling action sparked repeated controversy during his international career. Because of a congenital bend in his arm that caused unusual hyperextension during delivery, umpires and members of the cricket community frequently questioned his action. The International Cricket Council cleared it twice—first in 1996 and again in 1999—after biomechanical testing under simulated match conditions. Muralitharan topped the ICC Test bowler rankings for a record 1,711 days, spanning 214 Tests. He became Test cricket’s leading wicket-taker in 2007, surpassing Shane Warne. Earlier, in 2004, he had broken Courtney Walsh’s record of 519 wickets, but a shoulder injury later that year allowed Warne to overtake him. On 5 February 2009 in Colombo, he dismissed Gautam Gambhir to pass Wasim Akram’s ODI record of 502 wickets. He retired from Tests in 2010, taking his 800th and final wicket off his last ball on 22 July 2010. Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack rated him the greatest Test bowler in 2002, and in 2017 he became the first Sri Lankan cricketer inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. That same year he won the Ada Derana Sri Lankan of the Year award. Born into a Hill Country Tamil Hindu family in Kandy, Muralitharan is the eldest of four sons of Sinnasamy Muttiah and Lakshmi. His father runs a successful biscuit business. His paternal grandfather, Periyasamy Sinasamy, came from South India in 1920 to work on tea plantations in central Sri Lanka. Sinasamy later returned to India with his daughters and settled in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, but his sons—including Muralitharan’s father—stayed in Sri Lanka. At age nine, Muralitharan entered St. Anthony’s College, Kandy, a private school run by Benedictine monks. He started as a medium-pace bowler but switched to off-spin at 14 on the advice of school coach Sunil Fernando. He soon impressed and played for the school First XI for four years, batting in the middle order as an all-rounder. In his final two seasons he took over 100 wickets and was named Bata Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year in 1990–91. After school he joined Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club and was selected for Sri Lanka A’s 1991 tour of England, where he took no wickets in five games.