Muralitharan cross 800 wickets

But sport rarely serves up freebies, and the truth is that Muralitharan was only inches away from ending his career on the bathetic total of 799. Not just once, either. Anti-climax threatened on three separate occasions.

Muralitharan had started the final day of his final Test match just two wickets away from this extraordinary landmark - a landmark that Shane Warne believes no-one will ever conquer again. And when he had Harbhajan Singh lbw, in the fifth over of the day, the summit was only a single step away.

But that was the point when things started to go wrong. Test debutant Abhimanyu Mithun hung around for nearly an hour before planting his pad in front of a lethal yorker from Lasith Malinga. VVS Laxman, the old maestro, ran himself out with a dozy single.

Suddenly India were nine down, and while victory for Sri Lanka appeared a formality, the great Murali soap opera stood in danger of ending on a bum note. A total of 799, like Don Bradman’s final Test average of 99.94, would have gone down as a job left unfinished.

The final-wicket partnership, between Ishant Sharma and Pragyan Ojha, was slow and anxious. After a quarter-hour or so, Murali himself came within a couple of inches of running Ojha out, but his throw flew just wide.

What a conclusion that would have been: the great man stranded by his own dead-eyed accuracy. And the irony would have been all the greater because so many critics, thoughout Muralitharan’s career, have accused him of throwing.

Two more heart-stopping moments remained: the first when Tillakaratne Dilshan came close to having Sharma stumped; and the second when Ojha popped an almost-catch back to Rangana Herath.

Then, finally, after 54 minutes of agony, the tension resolved itself. Another of Muralitharan’s sizzling off-breaks bit and took the edge of Ojha’s bat; Mahela Jayawardene, perhaps the safest slip fielder in world cricket, darted to his left to claim the catch.

The sound of fireworks rang out around the Galle International Stadium, while Muralitharan’s whole family - his parents, wife and four-year-old son - danced in celebration. The only notable absentee was Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rakapaksa, who had flown in from Colombo to watch part of the morning session, but left before the crucial wicket fell.

"Getting to 800 was not as important as winning the match," said Muralitharan afterwards. "By God's grace, both things happened which made it the greatest day of my life.”

It was a typically modest reaction from a man who, despite his mind-boggling achievements, has a smaller ego than many less successful cricketers.

Muralitharan gave every impression of being relaxed and carefree yesterday morning, even smiling in his infectious way whenever it seemed as if he would be robbed of that historic final wicket. Deep down, though, he cared deeply about reaching 800.

“It meant a lot to him,” said Charlie Austin, the co-author of Muralitharan’s autobiography, who was sitting in the stands yesterday. “Especially as he didn’t really believe, at the start of the match, that he could get there. His body is creaking now and once he has bowled 20 overs, he starts to get very tired.

“We were almost giving up hope as that last partnership dragged on. The pitch had gone very flat and he had been twirling away for so long that I thought his arm was going to fall off. But he got there in the end, and rightly so. If anyone has ever deserved to take 800 wickets in Test cricket, it is Murali.”