The seven's worth a double
They say cricket is a batsman's game; an opinion evidenced, among other things, by the fact that my last piece on numbers in cricket was inadvertently but overwhelmingly batsmen-centric. It is the bowlers who win matches for their teams, particularly Tests, and it is they who exemplify the sporting virtues of perseverance and innovation in this age of ever-shortening boundaries, ever-broadening bats, Steven Smith and Virat Kohli. So, the numbers they generate are just as relevant to the game as those amassed by batsmen.
Cricket fans and experts generally set much store by five-wicket hauls, arguing, quite rightly, that it is the bowling equivalent of a century. After all, whenever a bowler dismisses five batsmen, he sends half the opposition's batting back to the pavilion, to give his or her own team some sort of ascendancy. In my view, however, the high watermark of a bowler's career is a seven-wicket haul, and the greater the number of times a bowler has taken seven wickets in an innings, the more resonant is his legend.
My fascination with seven-wicket hauls is probably rooted in my admiration for India's greatest match-winner - and my favourite bowler, growing up - Anil Kumble, whose best return in a Test innings was 7 for 59, before he took 10 for 74 against Pakistan in 1999. By the time he hung up his boots in international cricket, Kumble had taken another four seven-wicket hauls, including 8 for 141 in Sydney and - my favourite - 7 for 48 in Chennai, the latter triggering a first-day Australian collapse from 136 for 0 to 235 all out.
R Ashwin, the one contemporary spinner I follow closely, has taken seven wickets in a Test innings five times in 68 matches, including in the first innings of the Visakhapatnam Test against South Africa. In his own 91-match Test career, Nathan Lyon, Australia's best spinner since Shane Warne, has picked up four hauls of seven wickets or more, three of which have been against India.
When one thinks of seven wickets in an innings, or eight, or nine, or simply wickets, it is impossible to look beyond Sri Lanka's wily wide-eyed Muttiah Muralitharan, whose wrist-shot hard-spun off-breaks earned him 11 seven-wicket hauls - including three eight-wicket hauls and two nine-wicket ones - in Test cricket alone. That these hauls came against five different teams - South Africa (2), England (4), Zimbabwe (2), West Indies (1) and India (2) - spread over a period of eight years are a testament to Muralitharan's absolute mastery over batsmen as a Test bowler.
For good measure, though, Murali also has a seven-wicket haul in the shorter form of the game: it came in 2000, against India, in Sharjah of all places, making him the second bowler to take seven wickets in an ODI innings after Aaqib Javed, who had taken 7 for 37 nine years earlier, also against India. The seven-wickets-in-an-innings club in ODI cricket is an elite one, with only ten others (Chaminda Vaas, Shahid Afridi, Glenn McGrath, Rashid Khan, Andy Bichel, Tim Southee, Waqar Younis, Trent Boult, Imran Tahir, and Winston Davis) being part of it.
The corresponding club in Test cricket is much older and therefore highly populated. Among its members are the illustrious two Ws - Wasim Akram and Waqar, the champion pair of Warne and McGrath, Michael "Whispering Death" Holding, Curtly 'speak to no man' Ambrose, Allan "White Lightning" Donald, Dale Steyn, "8-15" Stuart Broad, "Burnley Lara" James Anderson, Richard Hadlee, the ever-resourceful Daniel Vettori, "Haryana Hurricane" Kapil Dev, Harbhajan "Turbanator" Singh, the avuncular Rangana Herath, the dependable Chaminda Vaas, and the fine allrounder Shakib Al Hasan . Some less-heralded names who are also part of the club, are Jack Noreiga (West Indies), Ravindra Pushpakumara (Sri Lanka), Mike Whitney (Australia), Bert Vogler (South Africa), John Wardle (England), Mohammad Zahid (Pakistan), Chris Pringle (New Zealand), Paul Strang (Zimbabwe), Enamul Haque Jnr. (Bangladesh) and Amar Singh (India), each of whom has one entry of seven wickets or more in Test cricket.
If (other things being constant) a bowler's five wickets are akin to a batsman's century, as suggested earlier in the piece, bowling performances yielding seven or more wickets are probably worth more runs. Accordingly, to this writer, a seven-wicket haul is worth a double-century, an eight-wicket haul 250 runs, a nine-wicket haul a triple-hundred, and an all-ten a quadruple ton. However, the very temptation to equate wickets with runs is a window into a memory landscape, where batting numbers are recalled quicker than bowling ones. It is time, therefore, to treat bowling numbers on their own merit, and remember that Warne picked up 707 Test wickets apart from the Gatting one, that only ten of Kumble's international wickets came on a hazy day at the dusty Kotla, that there was more to McGrath than his miserly economy rate, and that Anderson's 575 wickets do not, cannot, talk of a one-trick pony.
A phonologist on sabbatical and an English teacher by necessity, Srinivas thinks and writes about cricket in his downtime.
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