Monday, December 03, 2007

Question Time

A lot of sensible cricket commentators (and Bumble) are suggesting that HWAMNBQ's record will never be broken.

My thoughts to follow. Yours?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It may never be broken, but it will always be questioned.

Tony said...

Cheaters often prosper.

Jrod said...

It's not like the best bowler in the world is the one who has the most wickets anyway.

David Barry said...

Murali should, fitness permitting, go on to take over 900 wickets before he retires.

The last bowler to come close to Murali's wicket-taking rate (over 6 wickets per Test) was Clarrie Grimmett, whose last Test was in 1941 (I think). Using this as a timescale, it is reasonable to guess that the record won't be challenged for half a century or so.

Will enough Test cricket be played in 2070 to allow players to have 150-Test careers? I hope so....

Mark said...

Fair comment David. Most nations play on average 13-15 tests per calendar year. If you take an average of 5 wkts per test, that's 75 per year, which would only entail a 12 year career to get to 900.

Obviously that's a very utopian calculation - but it surely proves that, in the right circumstances, Murali's record could fall.

To my mind, the only unbreakable record is 99.94. (Possibly 197 as well, but any batsman would surely have lost the will to live before he passed that milestone!)

Jrod said...

Can we reanimate the corpse of Clarrie Grimmett, not to beat Murali, just cause he seems like a nice little fellow.

David Barry said...

Mark: I'm not sure that bowlers' bodies can cope with a 180-Test career. We'll see!

Possibly 197 as well
Hobbs's first-class centuries? There are a bunch of first-class aggregate records that will stay unchallengeable unless county cricket (or some other domestic comp) goes back to playing very high numbers of matches. Wilfred Rhodes, for instance, has the records for most balls bowled, most wickets taken, and most runs conceded.

Tony said...

What we desperately need are more cricketers named Wilfred and Clarrie.

And maybe the odd American name: Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila Ponting works for me.