Cricket:Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan, cricket's leading international wicket taker, will retire from Test cricket after this month's first Test against India.
"Murali took a decision to retire from Test cricket during the West Indies series in November but with an unscheduled Indian series coming up he has fast-tracked his retirement from Test cricket," said his manager Kushil Gunasekara today.
"The selectors want Murali to consider himself to be available for the 2011 World Cup which Sri Lanka is partly hosting with India and Bangladesh," Gunasekara added.
The 38-year-old off-spinner is unlikely to play in the one-day Tri-Series against India and New Zealand next month but may play one-day internationals in the build-up to next year's World Cup.
Sri Lanka are due to tour Australia in November where they will play three one-day and two Twenty20 Internationals and they have five one-day matches against West Indies in December.
Muralitharan has taken 792 wickets in 132 tests and 515 wickets in 337 one-day internationals since making his Test debut against Australia in 1992.
A statement from Sri Lanka Cricket said an official press conference would be held "in due course" to announce Muralitharan's retirement.
"Mr. Muralitharan has had discussions with the National Selectors, SLC officials and has had the blessings of His Excellency the President Mahinda Rajapakse and the Minister of Sports, Hon. C B Ratnayake," said a statement on the Sri Lanka Cricket website (www.srilankacricket.lk).
Muralitharan has never been far from controversy with his unusual action causing umpires to no-ball him for throwing in the early stages of his Test career, before the International Cricket Council (ICC) altered their guidelines to allow for a measure of tolerance for the straightening of a bowler’s elbow during delivery.
Mike Atherton, former Lancashire team-mate of Muralitharan, said: “It’s a controversy that will always be linked in with him but, regardless of whether you think the arm straightened or not, it’s still an incredibly skilful thing to do what he did - which is turn it the amount he did, bowl it with the accuracy that he did, have the stamina that he did.”
“It’s certainly unorthodox. Most off-spinners would try to get close to the crease, get sideways-on and use the index finger to spin the ball.
“He bowled from wide of the crease, chest-on, kind of flicked it with his wrist and obviously the elbow as well.
“That’s the controversy that has dogged him throughout his career - he was called in Australia by Darrell Hair and Ross Emerson.
“He caused the ICC to rewrite their regulations really so that now bowlers are allowed to straighten the angle of their arm by 15 degrees at delivery which is strictly against the laws of the game, but the regulations allow for it and that is really down to one man.
“Given those regulations it’s impossible to say what is a throw and what is not.”
For much of his career, Muralitharan was involved in a battle for superiority with Australia leg-spinner Shane Warne.
The pair, the only bowlers in history to take more than 700 Test scalps, were in competition to be the world’s leading wicket-taker, but Muralitharan ultimately triumphed following Warne’s retirement.
Atherton added: “One was a leg-spinner and one was an off-spinner but they were both in a sense wrist-spinners because Murali was a very unorthodox off-spinner - he bowled with his wrists rather than his fingers.
“Both took masses and masses of wickets and rewrote the record books in terms of pure wicket-taking ability.
“Who was better? I think for myself Warne was better. I felt he had a better cricketing brain.
“But that’s not to take anything away from Murali, who had a kind of freakish brilliance.”