Muralitharan may retire before the 2011 World Cup

By Rahul Bajaj
for Cricketain.com

Published: November 30, 2009

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Colombo: It is probably for the first time in his 18-year-long career that ace off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan is struggling to pick up wickets or even trouble the batsmen. Disappointed at his inability to provide the team with the required breakthroughs in the ongoing test series against India, the champion Sri Lankan spinner said that he is no longer the force that he used to be and he might even retire from all forms of the game before the 2011 World Cup.

Muralitharan has already announced his retirement from test cricket after next year’s series against West Indies but he was expecting to play one-day cricket till at least the 2011 World Cup. But frustrated with his failures during this series, he said that he may just hang up his boots completely before the World Cup.

“I am 37 years old and I can’t bowl as much as those days because after 15-16 overs I get tired. But I will try and play a little bit of one-day cricket; that’s only 10 overs to bowl. If I find everything is not going well I might retire from both forms of the game before the World Cup,” Muralitharan said.

“Everything depends on how much my body can take. My body may hold for one-day cricket because it’s a fifty-over game. In Test cricket it’s a little bit harder because I have always been a threat to other sides. At the moment it’s not looking like that because others are playing me well. I think I made the right decision to retire from Test cricket at the end of the West Indies series next year,” he was quoted as saying by The Nation.

Muralitharan said that his body is not holding up too well to the rigorous schedules of International Cricket these days and that Sri Lanka should now start looking beyond him to get them the results.

“Two to three years ago it was not like this. Now you have niggles here and there and my groin is not the same as it used to be. We got the worst conditions of bowling in the last two Tests. We didn’t have the bowlers when we were bowling; that was one of the factors. But that’s the way cricket goes, everything won’t work for you in your favour,” said Muralitharan, who needs just 12 wickets to become the first bowler with 800 Test scalps.

“There was a time when the team was dependent on me for wickets but it has to change. Others must also get a chance. Rangana (Herath) is bowling well and so is (Ajantha) Mendis. They will have to carry through in the years to come. Whatever I did in the last 18 years is not possible for anybody to achieve because I ran through sides alone getting five-for in an innings 66 times and 22 ten-wicket match hauls. One single spinner cannot achieve that but as a collective unit of bowlers they can take wickets against oppositions. We have fast bowlers and spinners and they are good enough to do that,” he added.

This is Muralitharan’s fourth test tour to India and he is finding it increasingly hard to trouble the Indian batsmen who seem to be playing him with considerable ease. The stats for the highest wicket taker in test cricket in this series say it all with Muralitharan picking up just five wickets for 396 runs at an average of 79.20 in the first two tests.

“I’ve played only seven Test matches this year, two against Bangladesh, two against Pakistan where it was a dead rubber series and two against New Zealand when I really did bowl well in the second innings of the second Test with a groin injury. Whenever the side wanted a breakthrough I’ve got it for them in the New Zealand series. I don’t know why it’s not happening here,” he said.

“But, every cricketer has to go through disappointments. Everything you want to happen in life won’t happen, something will be missing. Looking back I can see what an amazing career I have gone through but if we can’t win in India, that’s it. Life has to go on,” he was quoted as saying by The Nation.

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