The ballad of Murali and Barry

Greatness comes in many shapes and hues. Rarely is it indisputable. A Londoner may deify Winston Churchill while a Dresden resident regards him as the devil incarnate. One of sport’s most alluring qualities is that, by dint of its statistical foundations, we can all, theoretically, agree about the magnitude of a performer’s achievements. Yet still we quibble.

Last Friday evening, I was at the Ford Sport and Social Club in Newbury Park, east London, primarily to see Nasser Hussain conduct a coaching session for the Sky Sports cameras with the girls and boys of Three Caps CC, recipients of this season’s Adopt-a-Club scheme run by The Wisden Cricketer. A splendid time was had by all, yet still a sour taste lingered.

Falling into conversation with the magazine’s deputy editor, Ed Craig, and a representative of the Essex County Board, we pondered whether Muttiah Muralitharan should be classified as a finger-spinner or a wrist-spinner. There was a decent case for either, we agreed. I mentioned that I had just written a piece for a Test programme putting him, for the sake of argument, into the former category, though I was not convinced. Cue an all-too familiar line from the Essex man, one I had fondly if naively hoped I would never hear again: “Of course, you should hear the pros talk about his chucking. They changed the law for his benefit, didn’t they?”

Containing my anger, I suggested it was a generational thing. I’ve certainly never heard an under-30 utter the c- word in this context. Look at Sachin Vaja, the Three Caps offspinning stalwart newly contracted to the county club. Murali is his idol. He would not have developed that wristy mode of delivery otherwise, much less out-bowl Saqlain Mushtaq when Essex 2nd XI met their Sussex counterparts last month. And nobody has batted an eyelid at him.

It struck me, not for the first time, that there is probably nothing, sadly, that can be done about these divergent perceptions. To some Murali is a cheat, a wickedly-grinning cad to match Terry-Thomas at his most bounderish. To others, he is cricket’s greatest matchwinner, and certainly its most heartwarming success story of modern times. Nobody, not even George Headley, has done more to inspire his team. Nobody, I would also contend, has ever had to clamber further or scrap harder to reach any sporting summit. From the parched fields of Kandy to becoming the only Tamil in the Sri Lanka dressing room; from trial-and-ridicule by Australian umpires whose impartiality roused doubt to trial-by-ICC with arm in sling. Every hoop has been jumped through, every dart met by a disarmingly toothy smile. A Murali tantrum? Rarer than a kind on-field word or modest media declamation from Glenn McGrath. Yet still the darts fly.

It is tempting, as ever, to cite racism as a root cause: to some, the idea of a Sri Lankan being the most prolific bowler in the game’s history is quite intolerable. In which case an instructive parallel can be drawn between Murali and his pursuit of Shane Warne’s 708 Test victims, and Barry Bonds, the African-American slugger currently bearing down on Hank Aaron’s Major League-record 755 home runs.

Bonds has been accused of cheating too, his perceived crime being the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Though nothing has been proven - even if it was, he would scarcely have been his sport’s only such offender – an indelible stain has attached itself.

The fact that batting, in baseball as in cricket, is a good deal more about timing than brute force, is almost invariably glossed over. Bonds’s cranium may have expanded alarmingly – and there seems to be a better than even chance that drugs are indeed the source – but what sets him apart is his ability to make productive connection with the ball more consistently than virtually any other big bopper in baseball annals. So far as I am aware, no drug has yet been invented that enhances hand-eye coordination while improving concentration. And yes, almost inevitably, the divide between the Barry lovers and the Bonds-bashers is largely along racial lines.

There are, however, a couple of distinct differences between Barry and Murali. For one thing, the former earns more money in a month than the latter will do in his lifetime. Throughout his 20-year career, Bonds, the son of an alcoholic major leaguer whose career coincided with the uncomfortable initial flowering of African-Americans in American sport, has tended to treat the media as the avowed enemy, multiplying the Bonds-bashers tenfold. Murali is patience personified, a genial genie.

What unites them further, however, is what they attract. Envy, jealousy, the green-eyed monster – whatever you want to call it, they arouse it, in forebears as well as peers. Which is why, when Jeff Perlman set off in search of former teammates and opponents prepared to discredit Bonds for his recent book Love Me, Hate Me – Barry Bonds and the making of an antihero, he was not short of takers. And why Murali’s fellow cricketers still whisper sour nothings.

Racism and jealousy: does it really matter which comes first? In the realms of the Seven Deadliest Sins, they’re as destructive as each other.