The lions and their shares

Now that the celebration of Muttiah Muralitharan's career has abated and Sri Lanka are continuing to clobber India without him, we thought it appropriate to bring up another stat that underlines how Sri Lanka wouldn't be where they are - a win and a draw away from the No. 1 Test ranking - without Murali's contribution. We've dug up a list of bowlers who took the largest percentage of their team's wickets during their careers, and though Murali isn't No. 1, he's far ahead of anyone who's played a comparable number of Tests.

Murali's taken 795 out of the 2065 wickets Sri Lanka managed to take in his 132 Tests. That's 38.50%. (His other five wickets, making it 800 in 133 matches, were for the ICC World XI against Australia in 2005). Sri Lanka used 59 other bowlers (part-timers included) in Murali's Tests and they took only 1270 wickets between them; 58 bowlers combined for 956 wickets, if you exclude Chaminda Vaas' 309.

Three bowlers - Jack Cowie, JJ Ferris and Ranji Hordern - have taken a higher percentage of their team's wickets than Murali has, but they all played fewer than 10 Tests. Cowie, the New Zealand medium-pacer whose nine Tests were either side of the Second World War, took 43.68% of his team's wickets: 45 out of 103. He also took the first ten-wicket haul by a New Zealander, against England at Old Trafford, and had figures of 6 for 40, out of a total of eight wickets, in his only Test against Australia.

Murali, however, is the only bowler to have sustained such a dominating performance over more than 100 Tests. Richard Hadlee, with 34% of New Zealand's wickets in his 86 Tests, and Alec Bedser, with 30% of England's wickets in his 51, are the only other bowlers with more than 50 matches in the table below. Among currently active players, only Mohammad Asif and Dale Steyn have taken more than 30% of their team's wickets.

Among batsmen, Don Bradman scored 24.28% of the runs made by Australia in his 52 Tests (6996 out of 28,810). Brian Lara and Sunil Gavaskar are the only batsmen to have made more than 16% of their team's runs after playing more than 100 Tests.

New Zealand's Jesse Ryder and Bangladesh's Tamim Iqbal are the only currently active players in the table below, scoring more than 16% of their team's runs. Modern greats such as Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis don't feature because they've been part of strong batting line-ups.

Tendulkar does appear in the table for ODI batsmen, though, having scored 18% (17,598) of India's 97,726 runs in his 442 games. The highest percentage contribution, however, is by Netherlands' Ryan ten Doeschate, who has made 24% of his team's runs in his 27 matches. Ten Doeschate has scored 1234 runs at an average of nearly 69, though most of Netherlands' opponents have been fellow minnows.

The leading contender to displace ten Doeschate from the top spot is South Africa's Cricketer of the Year, Hashim Amla. Despite being part of a strong batting line-up, Amla has scored nearly 20% of South Africa's runs in 29 matches (1371 out of 6925). At this rate, it'll be a matter of time before he moves past Zaheer Abbas (21%), but he will have to lift his average from 54.84 to catch ten Doeschate.

Which bowler do you think has taken the highest percentage of team wickets during his ODI career? It would have to be someone with an outstanding strike rate in a relatively short career; someone like Shaun Tait, Ajantha Mendis or Shane Bond. The answer is a New Zealand bowler but it isn't Bond, who is third. It's Geoff Allott, followed by another New Zealander, Chris Pringle, in second place.

Allott took 52 out of the 195 wickets New Zealand claimed in his 31 ODIs (27%), while Pringle claimed 25% of his team's 410 wickets in 64 matches. Unfortunately for New Zealand, the careers of Pringle, Allott and Bond did not overlap, or they might have possessed a remarkable strike force.

If there's a particular List you would like to see, email us with your comments and suggestions.