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England versus Sri Lanka at The Oval in 1998


Scorecard 3

Overs Maidens Runs Wickets
Wickremasinghe
4
0
16
0
Perera
11
2
22
0
Muralitharan
54.2
27
65
9
Dharmasena
19.3
13
12
0
Jayasuriya
28
14
30
0
De Silva
10.3
3
16
0
Jayawardene
2
0
5
0
 
 

 
 

Analysis

Muralitharan took nine of the 10 wickets.
This bowling anaylsis demonstrates the degree to which Sri Lanka depended (and still do depend) on Muralitharan as their main bowling force.
The only other England wicket to fall was a run out, and so doesn't appear in the bowling figures.

Muralitharan bowled 54 of the 129 overs.
It isn't possible for a single bowler to bowl more than half the overs in an innings, so this demonstrates that Murali must have bowled almost non-stop from one end while other bowlers took their turn at the other.
Incidentally, three bowlers ended with incomplete overs. Murali took the last wicket of the innings after two balls of an over, and Dharmasena was injured three balls into one of his overs, so the final three balls of that over were bowled by De Silva.


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