From Hill to Warne

From Hill to Warne by Muhammad Asim

Dates are ordinary but human deeds make them extraordinary. March 15, 1877 was one such date made special by two teams Australia and England as they went on to play history’s first ever Test match. When England’s round arm ‘length’ bowler Alfred Shah delivered the first ball in Test cricket to Australia’s Charles Bannerman (at 1:05 pm local time); no one knew where they were starting. Five minutes later, Allan Hill became the first man on the planet to take a Test wicket when he disturbed the furniture of Nathaniel Thomson. At that time even 200 Test wickets were seemed to be a distant mirage but almost 128 years later the statistic now seem to have become a passé.

At 1108 hrs IST on October 15, 2004, the second day of the second Test against India at Chennai was made special by another genius of the age: Shane Warne. The leg-spinner at last climbed the bowling apogee when he pitched a turning delivery (his 30,887th legitimate ball) outside the off stump to Irfan Pathan who pushed it to end up with a thick edge straight to Mathew Hayden at first slip who took a good low catch. The wicket made him the most successful bowler of all time taking him ahead of Muttiah Muralitharan [532 wkts] in the hall of fame.

It would be interesting to see how far Warne stretches the world record before Muralitharan comes back from injury. The accompanying table lists progressive world record holders of most Test wickets.

Spider Chart note: Progressive world record holders clockwise from top. Bowlers who held the word record twice are features only once in the chart. So far 24 bowlers have shared this record 32 times. Full details have been given in the accompanying table.