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Muttiah Muralitharan has become the first cricketer to reach 800 test wickets, taking his final and 800th wicket with the last test delivery he will ever make. That’s about as dramatic as it can get.

Now, you out there who know even a small amount about cricket will have heard of Murali, the man who with every ball he sends down the pitch seems to defy the laws of anatomy and twist his arms and wrist in ways that not even conjoined twins could imagine. 
   He even invented a type of delivery, called the Dosra, which spins in the opposite direction than it should. Throughout his whole career Murali has been labelled a cheat, or a chucker. Even New Zealand’s own Martin Crowe, not just content with warning us about hair loss, was also one of many to take aim at Murali’s action. 
   The one place he will forever be hated is Australia – surprising, when you consider the win-at-all-costs mentality that prevails throughout Australian sport which has itself has led to a few instances of dropped catches being claimed and Trevor Chappell practising his lawn bowls on the cricket pitch. You would think the Australians wouldn’t mind someone with a bit of difference.
   There are always going to be (cricket) player haters out there, trying to bring down the achievements Murali has made over his past 18 years of international cricket. There will be those who ring Radio Sport complaining that he was only allowed to chuck because he had black skin, that if he was white he would have been chucked out long ago. Now I’m not saying his delivery is perfect but it is amazing to watch especially when he gets those P-dealer eyes on. Now, because of Mulari, we know that all cricketers were in fact chuckers, by the fact that when all bowlers and their bowling actions were examined all but one was found to be outside the legal five-degrees bend which was allowed by the rule book. 
   Even with all this criticism, at different points in his career, Murali has been subjected to the best tests that sports science has to offer, where they measured everything from his elbow rotation to his chest hair length.
   Even Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard weighed in on the issue with his great cricketing expertise saying that Murali was a chucker. To be fair, Howard is a dirty racist who probably didn’t like the fact there was a Sri Lankan better than their beloved Warney. 
   With all the hate that has been laid out in the past his stats speak for themselves, 800 test and 515 ODI wickets it’s fair to say that he will go down as one of the best bowlers ever, if not the best, and with the declining popularity of test cricket he may never be surpassed.