Warne vs Muralitharan - A complete detailed comparision!

2 of the greatest spinners of all time!

Both regarded as the greatest spinners in the history books of Cricket, let us see who takes the win in this detailed analysis!

Bowling style

Muralitharan was a wily bowler who could generate a lot of turn with unusual hyperextension along with having his trumpcard the doosra which earned him quite some wickets. He had slightly more pace than Warne. Was quite an unorthodox but an effective bowler!

Warne on the other hand had an orthodox and simple action, he relied on generating alot of revs in the ball which gave him huge spin and got quite alot of wickets (bowled) around batsman legs. He too had some variations in his book like the flipper and googly. He generally bowled slower than Murali and gave quite alot of flight and loop to the bowl.

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Raw stats

While taking a look at raw stats Murali averaged just 22.7 at 55 SR while Warne averaged 25.41 with a slightly higher SR of 57. Clearly Murali seems better here but that could be argued due to the fact that Murali bowled alot more in the subcontinent than Warne while Warne bowled his career in Australia and other SENA countries more often.

Countrywise record

Talking about countrywise record in strong countries,

• Warne outperforms Murali in South Africa, India, and in SL than Murali in Aus.
• Murali on the other hand outperforms Warne in England, New Zealand, West Indies and Pakistan.

While Murali has been better in more countries, Warne has had much more sample size in all the away countries thus would give a tie here.

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Detailed analysis

Let us compare their individual countrywise averages to the overall spin record during the matches they played in that country involving them to see how much better or worse they were than the overall spin bowling record during the matches involving them.

To make it simpler, let us assume Bowler A averages 25 in Country X and Bowler B averages 20 in the same Country X. From raw stats, it would look that Bowler B is much better, but if we assume that the overall spin bowling average in the matches Bowler A played in Country X was 40 while the overall spin bowling average in the matches Bowler B played in Country X was 25, Clearly Bowler A is better due to the fact he performed much better than other bowlers in more batting friendly conditions while Bowler B was just a tad good than others.

Note- the overall spinners average below does not exclude the respective bowlers stats and includes it.

Shane Warne

Overall spinners average in 🇿🇦 in matches involving Warne - 30.20

Warne in 🇿🇦- 24.31

Warne has 19.5 % better average than the overall spinners average in 🇿🇦 involving Warne

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Overall spinners average in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 involving Warne- 29.38

Warne in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿- 21.95

25.2% better average than the overall spinners record in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 involving Warne

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Overall spinners average in 🇳🇿 involving Warne- 25.06

Warne in 🇳🇿 - 21.31

14.9% better

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Overall spinners average in 🇮🇳 involving Warne- 32.67

Warne in 🇮🇳- 43.12

31.98% worse

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Overall spinners average in 🌴 involving Warne- 37.73

Warne in 🌴- 39.65

5.08 % worse

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Overall spinners average in 🇵🇰 involving Warne- 39.33

Warne in 🇵🇰- 28.00

28 % better

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Overall spinners average in 🇱🇰 involving Warne- 29.11

Warne in 🇱🇰- 20.46

29.7% better

Muttiah Muralitharan

Overall spinners average in 🇦🇺 in matches involving Murali- 44.87

Murali in 🇦🇺- 75.00

Murali has 67% worse average than the overall spin bowling average in Australia involving Muralitharan

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Overall spinners average in 🇿🇦 involving Murali- 27.98

Murali in 🇿🇦- 26.00

7.05% better

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Overall spinners average in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 involving Murali- 26.39

Murali in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 - 19.20

27.24% better

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Overall spinners average in 🇳🇿 involving Murali- 23.54

Murali in 🇳🇿- 19.97

15.2% better

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Overall spinners average in 🇮🇳 involving Murali- 36.25

Murali in 🇮🇳 - 45.45

25.37% worse

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Overall spinners average in 🌴 involving Murali- 30.35

Murali in 🌴- 23

24.2% better

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Overall spinners average in 🇵🇰 involving Murali- 37.25

Murali in 🇵🇰- 24.96

32.9% better

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To sum things up-

Note- As I said before better or worse means better or worse from the overall spin record in the respective country. For eg.- Warne being 19.5% better in SA means Warne has 19.5% better average than the overall spin average in SA involving Warne and Murali being 7.05% better in SA means Murali has 7.05% better average than the overall spin average in SA involving Murali

• We can see Muralitharan has had the win in the countries England, India, West Indies and Pakistan
• While Warne on the other hand has had the win in the countries South Africa and better in SL than Murali is in Australia.

This shows in most countries, Murali had outperformed the other spinners at a higher rate in his away matches than Warne had done.

While Murali has been better in 4 while Warne only in 2 than Murali. If we see that in the countries Murali has been better, the difference hasn't been huge but in the Countries Warne has been better ( SA and Sl/Aus), the difference has been huge.

Thus this would be a close fought tie as Murali was let down by his miserable record in Australia and considering Warne has had more sample size in almost all the countries.

Stats reference- ESPN Statsguru

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Innings wise record

Looking into the innings wise record, both have been quite similar in the 1st innings with Warne having slightly better SR and Murali having slightly better average. Murali on the other hand has much better record in the 2nd innings and takes a slight lead in the 3rd and 4th Innings as well having better averages.

Clearly Murali excels out Warne here.

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Head to Head record

Let us see how do both perform in matches involving both of them

• Muralitharan in matches involving Warne- 30.51 Average
• Warne in matches involving Murali- 20.35 Average

It might seem Warne has better record due to Murali's bad record in Aus but Warne excels in SL as well in matches involving Murali with Warne averaging 19.88 compared to Murali's average of 24.88.

Warne having better record could be due to the fact Aus had a better batting lineup than Sri Lanka but I would give this a win to Warne nonetheless by a small margin.

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Role

Murali was more of a main bowler in the team most of the times while Warne was more of a supporting spinner to the other Aussie pacers and not always the main bowler of the team.

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To sum things up It was a tie in detailed analysis and Murali got the win in innings by innings record while Warne got the win in Head to Head record. I think both are good but I prefer Warne having been better in Head to Head record and Murali having failed completely in the best country during his time -Australia.

Why is Shane Warne, not Muralidharan, called the "king of spin"? After all, he has many more wickets in his hand.

 I can understand why the questioner asked this question , Murali played 13 less games than Shane Warne and still he managed to get 92 more wickets than him which is a huge number

Even though Murali clearly leads in the number of wickets, Warne is called ‘The King of Spin’ for some of the reasons given below:

Murali's performance against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh

Murali picked 89 wickets against Bangladesh and 87 wickets against Zimbabwe. These two countries together which add up to 176 out of the 800 wickets of Murali

Warne, has only 11 wickets against Bangladesh and 6 against Zimbabwe.

It was definitely Murali’s advantage that he played more against them. But obviously that wasn't his fault either.

Chucking Incident

I think the chucking accusation caused him to be less considered as King of Spin as Shane Warne. After bowling so many overs in Australia, suddenly umpire Daryll Hair called him for “throwing” continuously.

It was cleared by ICC and again umpire Emerson called him again for throwing when Murali started bowling leg spin against West Indies.

ICC cleared his action again and again. Many people still call him chucker which is quite unfair considering his action was clearly fair. Whereas Warne didn't had to go through such incidents. And therefore he had a cleaner image.

More competition for Warne

Warne had played in a fantastic Aussie team which contained McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and MacGill. Warne had to be the best among these bowlers. It was tough to pick wickets when you have such an excellent line up who all can win matches on will whereas Murali had only Vaas to with him, so he got chances to pick more wickets and lead the hurdle

Spin friendly conditions for Murali

Warne played most of his matches in Australia. This is one country in which many teams prefer playing without a mainstream spinner in their playing XI. Warne picked up 300 wickets in Australia which is huge considering the not so spin friendly conditions, it is an obvious fact that he grew up playing in these conditions, still, 300 is no small number in Australia

Most of Murali’s matches were played in Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan. These are spinner paradises. And he has, 600 -odd wickets in these three countries, whereas he has less wickets outside Asia

Confidence level

Brian Lara told this in an Interview.

“Muttiah (Muralitharan) always confused me in the early part of our confrontation, whilst Shane Warne didn’t. Having said that, as my innings grew I felt I had more control over Muttiah, whilst Shane seemed to grow in confidence. They were definitely the two best spinners of my time,” Lara said.

Warne even after getting smashed for sixes and fours had the guts to flight the ball like anything hoping to get a wicket. While Muralitharan had lost some of confidence to fight the ball.

Ball of the century by Warne

In the 1993, Warne plays his first Ashes Test at the Old Trafford, Manchester. Then followed a memory that was etched in all cricket fans’ hearts. Shane Warne produced a ball that pitched outside leg stump to hit top of off stump to English batsman Mike Gatting. He had produced the ‘ball of the century’.

From this ball of the century, everybody called Warne as the King of Spin because he had produced a gem of a delivery which pitched outside leg stump and hit the top of off to make a fool out of Gatting.

Due to all of the above reasons Shane Warne is called the “King of Spin” And not Murali though both were legends. And personally I like Warne more as well.