Murali lets the side down

[Yes, it’s a cricket post. Apologies to those not yet afflicted.]

Twenty20. The IPL. Darrell Hair. Sreesanth, Harbhajan, Collingwood, de Villiers. The Ponting bat. Jelly babies. The Pietersen stroke. Difficult times for cricket lovers? Not really. Aficionados know that the ideals of the game never change: they know what’s cricket and what’s not cricket. Humans are fallible, especially under pressure. Cricket is bigger than that.

One of the things that cricket is about is statistics. The more esoteric and offbeat the better. In cricket, when the going gets tough, it’s time for the tough to get going on completely useless statistics. So here’s one for you.

Test number 1869. West Indies versus Sri Lanka. Providence Stadium, Guyana, 22-26 March 2008. A match famous for this sequence: MG BSM KC DPMD TT TM HAPW WPUJC MTT HMRKB M.

M? Yup, he’s the one who lets the side down. Good old Muttiah Muralitharan, Test cricket’s highest ever wicket taker, has no other initial but that solitary M.

Otherwise Test number 1869 may prove very hard to beat, with the Sri Lankan team average of 3 initials per player.

Any improvements?