Murli was benefited by relaxed ICC rules, says Maninder

Former Indian test cricketer Maninder Singh has said that Muttaiah Murlidharan, who has retired on Thursday from test cricket with 800 wickets in his kitty, took advantage of the relaxed rules of ICC. He took only 133 test matches to take wicket in such huge numbers.

Maninder has said that Murli’s action was never correct and the ICC kept on bending the rules for him. He said that there were no right people to monitor his bowling action and the monitoring committee had no umpires, who know the definition of chucking and can watch players closely for chucking.

It is unlikely that Murli’s record of 800 wickets in the test matches will be broken in the near future, especially when test cricket is being played in fewer numbers now and other formats are preferred. Murli consistently performed for 18 years. While Murli says that Harbhajan may break his record, he is being polite. This is because Bhajji still need 455 wickets to go past Murli’s record. But Bhajii shall have to play for 10 more years in at least 100 tests and it is unlikely to happen.