Who's best?

It almost doesn't feel right. Why compare Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan? They should each be framed, revered, savoured for what they are. Upping one with a little tick here, tugging one down with some new viewpoint there. It's irresistible.

If it must be done, it must be done subjectively, with numbers as props, never the whole truth. Free-for-all polls are not the best way either - ask Pele. So, five experts, who have played against or extensively watched both, were asked to make their choices.

Warne's is an inescapable charisma built on his gifts, his risks, his mistakes. Amid doleful 44-hour bus journeys on expulsion from academies, amid immature indiscretions with bookies and nurses, amid all the competitive abuse that invariably trickled into stump microphones, he shaped a career so magnificent, pushed the edges of his craft to such limits, that it was impossible to not be drawn in. He rose to occasions relentlessly and his greatest attraction remained his larger-than-life vitality on the field, his heroic vulnerability off it. "As a person I am confident and as a bowler I'm cocky," he once proclaimed. The kidology, the vulgarly exaggerated appeals and celebrations, they only amplified his considerable mastery over the nuances of spin bowling. Ask Daryll Cullinan or Robin Smith.

Then take another opinion from Sachin Tendulkar or VVS Laxman. Proof that there is no thing as perfection came in the form of 11 Tests against India at 55.44. With nimble feet and a mind free of fear, he could be conquered. It's all part of the game - even Bradman failed in his last innings. But Warne's overall impact was such that he was voted as one of Wisden's five cricketers of the century, behind only Bradman and Sobers.

When, then, did Murali rubber-wrist his way into the competition for best spinner in the world? 1998, if you look at the stats - a period that coincided with Warne's shoulder surgery and his first tour of India. But really, it was on January 18, 1994, when he was hit for six sixes in an innings by Navjot Sidhu at Lucknow. It made him sit up and think, as Sanjay Manjrekar explains. With an action that defied physics - and the laws of cricket, some feel (turn to Bishan Bedi's interview, page 30) - he slowly learned how to harness the power of his turn. And then, he figured how to spin it the other way.

All along, he remained unflagging of spirit and stamina, and since he was, for the most part, his team's only bowler, he unearthed methods to counter every situation a Test match could throw up. His eyes danced with mischief but his mind never wavered. His already formidable wickets-per-Test ratio reached proportions unmatched in the post-war period, and Sri Lanka became a truly competitive Test nation. Perhaps not even Tendulkar or Lara carried a team like Murali did. Warne, contrarily, shone brightest in a set of stars, which is both easier and harder.

In the end, two of our jurors plumped, fairly comfortably, for Murali, and two for Warne, while Navjot Sidhu, one of India's finest-ever players of spin, chose Murali when squeezed into a corner. But really, the debate only begins here.

What makes Warne special is his ability to exploit the rough. There aren't many bowlers who can pitch the ball in the rough and consistently take wickets. Of the 400-plus wickets he has taken, I would hazard that he may have taken about 200 from out of the rough.

Murali has a freak action. It makes him the only offspinner in the world who uses his wrist, rather than his fingers, to turn the ball. With such a vigorous wrist action, he imparts many more revolutions per minute on the ball than a conventional finger spinner like, say, Saqlain Mushtaq. Now with the away-going delivery, he is even deadlier.

There is hardly a chink in either of their armours. The weakness of any spinner is that he has only one length to bowl to. The only way to play these two is to come down the track, take a few chances, and then wait on the back foot.

But too many batsmen today premeditate their dance down the track, and don't watch the hand closely enough to know which way the ball will turn. To make things harder, both Murali and Warne disguise their variations superbly.

I am confident that Murali will end up as the world-record holder for most Test wickets because he gets more opportunities to pick up wickets than Warne does. Whatever the conditions are, he will bowl about 100 overs a match, and is bound to pick up an average of 5 or 6 wickets. Warne's effort is more creditable in that regard.

Who, then, is the better bowler? People tend to rate Warne as number one but I couldn't be bothered with that perception. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Australia have won a lot more matches than Sri Lanka.

But it should be remembered that Warne has had support from great batting, and great fast bowling.

It's like the comparison between Sachin Tendulkar and Steve Waugh - Tendulkar has been a lone warrior, just like Murali has. Murali's contribution to Sri Lanka's success has been no lesser than Warne's to Australia's.

If I was a captain and was forced to pick only one of them, I would be in a real quandary. I'd look at the opposition batting line-up and play Murali if there were more left-handers: I couldn't disagree more with the theory that he is not as effective against lefties.

If I'm really pushed into a corner to rate them, I'd go for Murali, but, really, it's too tight a call.

In technical terms, Warne is entirely orthodox; Murali is entirely unorthodox. Warne bowls all the varieties - legspinner, topspinner, googly, flipper and the backspinner out of the front of the hand. He has the ability to vary the amount of side- and over-spin at will, and often during an over you will see him going "around the loop".

Murali spins the ball even further than Warne - or anyone else in the game. At Galle last winter, he virtually had to pitch the ball on the edge of the cut strip to hit the stumps. His offspin comes from the wrist and it is the unbelievably flexible, almost rubbery, nature of his wrist that allows the rotation which, in turn, imparts spin on the ball. Because of his incredible spin, and the fact that batsmen began to use their pad as a second line of defence, Murali realised the need to beat the outside - as well as the inside - edge of the bat. So he developed his own type of topspinner which, when he gets his wrist far enough around, actually turns to the off. At Lancashire last summer, he was developing a flipper.

Murali's weakness is that he is less capable than Warne of varying the amount of spin. It is often all or nothing. One of Warne's great strengths is that he spins the ball huge distances while remaining phenomenally accurate. He is a captain's dream - a bowler who is at once both attacking and defensive - and when conditions are in his favour he has the ability to dry up the runs and to wreak havoc. The amount of spin he imparts on the ball also gives him more drift than other spinners.

I have always felt it is Warne's drift which makes it so hard to come down the wicket to play him. Where he departs from the orthodox is in his line. To right-handers he nearly always attacks at middle and leg stump and, if the pitch is really turning, he will often look to pitch outside leg.

Murali runs into problems because, in order to bowl offspin from the wrist, he has a chest-on action. This means that he rarely drifts the ball and is less effective round the wicket. Consequently he really dislikes bowling against left-handers and often struggles to dislodge even the most moderate of them. By the end of our Sri Lankan tour of 2000, he was bowling without hope against Graham Thorpe.

Ultimately it comes down to mental strength. Murali relies on his natural ability and phenomenal spin but is no match for Warne when it comes to thinking a batsman out. Murali rarely alters his lines or his tactics, though he is not helped by the fact that he virtually bowls non-stop at one end, allowing a batsman to get in against him and get used to his variations.

Warne never shies away when a batsman looks aggressive. He thrives on the challenge. Using his wicketkeeper and first slip as allies, he is quick to sniff out a batsman's weakness and has an unerring ability to exploit it. He is undoubtedly the smartest bowler of my generation. It is his ability to out-think a batsman that sets him apart and makes him the best bowler I played against.

The thing about Murali is, he is always making the batsman play. He is accurate too, so he causes problems all the time. Murali wins my vote because of the problems Warne encounters against batsmen from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Warne is clearly a great bowler and I like him very much as a man. It was obvious that he would be successful in England earlier this year because English batsmen are weak against legspin, always looking to defend. But Asian batsmen are determined to attack him, to punish his good balls as well as his bad balls. When that happens to a bowler he begins thinking only of how to save runs - not how to get a batsman out - and Warne has often failed against Asian batsmen, particularly in India. Mind you, he's not alone: when I played for Pakistan it was always my dream to perform extraordinarily against India. I ended with 27 wickets at 51 in 16 Tests against them.

Murali turns it sharply from outside the off stump and has the other one too which he bowls from wide of the stumps. But this is an easy time to be a spinner because the golden era of batting, when there were players like Viv Richards, Greg Chappell and Sunil Gavaskar, has passed. Back then the fast bowlers ruled and, as a result, the current generation do not play spin well. Even average spinners can take a lot of wickets.

Comparing two greats - and that's what Murali and Warne are - is never an easy task. However, my viewpoint, shaped mainly by playing against both of them, is that Murali is the better bowler. Murali was the better opponent because he never gave you an inch. He was constantly at you and invariably made you fear for your wicket.

Warne, on the three occasions - spread over several years - that I faced him, did not have quite the same effect.

Murali became a tremendous force from the moment he came to terms with his own ability, and worked out, with help from Sri Lankan coach Dave Whatmore, the line he must stick to and the fields he must bowl to. He tended to pitch too full and, to good players of spin, too wide of off stump. The turning point was probably the thrashing Navjot Sidhu gave him at Lucknow in 1994. Since then, he has been consistently great.

Warne too has been exceptional, but there have been more ups and downs in his career than in Murali's. Murali is a captain's dream: he can be called upon whether it is to eke out a win or force a draw. Warne needs to be used more judiciously than does Murali. The other area where Murali scores over Warne is his performance against top quality players of spin, particularly Indians. The same Indians who have treated Warne comfortably found Murali to be more than a handful in the Test series in Sri Lanka in August last year. I also believe that, as a general rule, offspinners find wickets harder to come by than legspinners. That makes Murali's efforts even more creditable.

However, Warne comes out on top in one respect. Because of his orthodoxy, he is the ideal role model for a youngster. Any coach would have his trainees closely scrutinise Warne's videos.

Murali's action is too freakish to be emulated. Warne is also the better-looking bowler. Few sights in cricket are prettier than Shane Warne's bowling action.

Warne is still unquestionably the best spinner in the game today, even if this seems a strange opinion coming from India where he has had so little success. In terms of sheer numbers, he suffers a bit in comparison with Murali, but their strike-rates are virtually identical - which tells me that Murali bowls a lot more balls per Test than Warne.

If Warne has had the advantage of Glenn McGrath and others softening up the opposition for him, he has also suffered from not being his team's single attacking bowler. This gives Murali a huge bonus because the ball keeps getting tossed to him. Both have achieved great success overseas, primarily because the big turner is their stock ball, so there is little to choose between them on that count.

My primary reason for voting Warne is that he is a more classical and, dare I say it, a cleaner spinner. Murali became a greater bowler after he developed the away-going ball, but he is a long way from convincing people that this specific ball abides by the current law governing fair deliveries.