Muttiah Muralitharan

800

Round numbers usually require asterisks and explanations. Not this one. Muttiah Muralitharan finished Test cricket with exactly 800 wickets — nearly a hundred clear of Shane Warne’s 708, more than 250 clear of anyone who has bowled since — and he reached the number with the very last ball of his career, having Pragyan Ojha caught at slip at Galle in July 2010 as India tried to bat out his farewell Test.

Add the ODI record — 534 wickets — and his total of 1,347 international wickets stands as perhaps the least assailable major record in the sport. The most prolific active bowlers retire a thousand short.

Career records at a glance

Record	Detail
Test wickets	800 — world record
ODI wickets	534 — world record
International wickets	1,347 — world record
Test five-wicket hauls	67 — world record (Warne is next with 37)
Test ten-wicket matches	22 — world record
Best match figures	16/220 at The Oval, 1998 (incl. 9/65)
1996 World Cup	Champion

The doosra and the debate

Murali bowled off-spin from a wrist so flexible and an elbow so uniquely shaped that his action was questioned, tested and re-tested throughout the 1990s. Biomechanists eventually demonstrated that his congenitally bent arm created an illusion of straightening — and the testing his case triggered ended up modernizing how all bowling actions are measured, revealing that most bowlers in history flexed more than the naked eye ever knew. Out of the controversy came vindication, and out of his wrist came the doosra — the off-spinner’s ball that turns the other way — which he weaponized like no one before him.

The one-man attack

The starkest Murali statistic isn’t 800; it’s the share. For most of his career he took around 40% of all wickets that fell to Sri Lankan bowlers in matches he played — a dependency no other great has carried. At The Oval in 1998 he took 16 wickets in one Test, bowling Sri Lanka to a historic win in England essentially alone. In the 1996 World Cup triumph, he was the attack’s quiet strangler while the batters made headlines.

Playing style

Enormous turn from any surface, delivered with a grin batters found more unsettling than a stare. Murali spun the ball hard on day one of a Test in Colombo and day five in Manchester alike; his accuracy meant maidens accumulated like interest, and his stamina was legendary — 40-over days, series after series, for two decades.

Net worth and legacy

Post-retirement, Murali built coaching and commentary careers alongside business interests in Sri Lanka; editorial estimates place his net worth at $15–20 million. His charitable work — most famously the Foundation of Goodness, which rebuilt communities after the 2004 tsunami — is among the most substantial by any athlete in the region.

See how 1,347 compares with everyone else in our guide to the most wickets in cricket history.