Murali ready for Indian challenge

The International Cricket Council may have asked Muttiah Muralitharan to keep the doosra wrapped up in cotton wool, but he insisted that there was still enough in his armoury to pose severe questions of the formidable Indian batting line-up when the two teams meet in the Asia Cup in a few days' time.

Muralitharan had a quiet chat with the media at the Nondescripts Club in Colombo's Maitland's Place, as India played their warm-up match a few yards away. "If you don't allow a bowler to use his weapon, it is like asking someone to run on just one leg," he said. "That has been my main weapon and that is being denied to me. It surely is going to affect me."

And while he acknowledged the Indians' batting prowess, there was no diffidence about facing up to them. "They are all good batsmen, but it is a matter of how well they are batting on a day and how well I am bowling on that day," he said, before adding that the battle would be won in the mind. "It is a mental game and I am very focused on myself. I practise very, very hard. Extra spin still remains my most potent weapon in this battle."

The spin doctors have conveniently labelled the India-Sri Lanka match as a confrontation between him and Sachin Tendulkar, but Murali refused to be drawn on the age-old debate about the identity of the world's best batsman. "It is hard to compare Brian Lara to Tendulkar," he said. "Both are great, only I have bowled more to Lara in Tests than to Tendulkar. I haven't bowled to Tendulkar in a Test for six years, and that is half of my Test career. It's hard to say who the better of the two is. Anyway, Indian batsmen are all good players of spin and good judges of the ball."

He said that he could relate to the pressure that has become a daily part of Tendulkar's life. "The pressure he gets from outside is tremendous. I also get the same kind of pressure, and I know how tough it is to live with it," he said. "It is tough because you have to perform every day. To control that pressure and still remain No. 1 is difficult."

He wasn't unduly fazed by the fact that Shane Warne had drawn level with him on 527 Test wickets. Warne himself has suggested that his younger rival might finish up with 1000 Test victims, and Muralitharan wasn't about to rule out the possibility. "I think I can play for six more years," he said. "I can still bowl a straighter one and can still impart great spin to my deliveries."

There was also the hope that the powers-that-be would lift the ban on his lethal weapon. "Hopefully, I can also use my doosra in the near future," he said. "It took me four or five years to develop this art."