Just a couple of days after Shane Warne’s tragic death in Thailand’s Koh Samui Island, Indian batting great Sunil Gavaskar is of the view that the late Australian spinner wasn’t the greatest of all time as his performance in India wasn’t up to the mark.
The 52-year-year was found unresponsive in his villa in Thailand on Friday where he was vacating. Despite best efforts from the medical personnel in the area, the Australian spin legend never woke up and was pronounced dead of a suspected heart attack.
Warne, with 708 Test wickets, sits just a place below former Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan (800) in the all-time wicket-takers list in the longest format of the game. When asked if he rates Warne as the greatest bowler of all time, Gavaskar placed the Muralitharan and Indian spinners above the Australian.
“No, I wouldn’t say that no. For me, the Indian spinners and Muttiah Muralitharan were certainly better than Shane Warne,” Gavaskar was quoted as saying in a television channel. “Because look at Shane Warne’s record against India. It was pretty ordinary.
“In India, he got five wickets only once in Nagpur, and that too because Zaheer Khan swung wildly against him to give him a fifer,” added Gavaskar. In India, Warne played nine Test matches taking 34 wickets. Comparatively, Muralitharan has 40 victims from 11 games.
“Because he did not have much success against Indian players who were very good players of spin, I don’t think I would call him the greatest,” Gavaskar said. “Muttiah Muralitharan with a greater success he had against India, I would rank him over Warne in my book,” he added.
The Indian batting great was lavish in his praise for Warne. “He mastered a craft which is so difficult to master, which is wrist spin. To pick 700-plus wickets like he did in Test cricket plus hundreds more in one-day cricket just tells you how good a bowler he was,” Gavaskar said.
“Finger spin is a lot easier, you have a lot more control over what you want to bowl, but leg spin or wrist spin is very, very tough.
“For him to have bowled the way he did, the way he seemed to create magic, the way he seemed to be able to deliver magic deliveries at will was the reason why he was revered all over the world,” he added.
However, Gavaskar faced criticism from some sections of Warne’s fans in India and the Australian media who stated that the 72-year-old’s comments were timed at all. The news of Warne’s death came within 24 hours of passing away of another Australian great Rodney Marsh at the age of 74.
Warne, since making his debut in 1992, played 145 Tests for Australia and 194 ODIs. In the 50-over format, Warne snared 293 scalps.
