‘We would have turned the ball, but not made a big dent’: Muttiah Muralitharan on modern T20 cricket

MUMBAI: On a night when Sunrisers Hyderabad chased down 243 against Mumbai Indians with eight balls and six wickets to spare, their spin-bowling coach Muttiah Muralitharan candidly admitted that T20 cricket has evolved to such an extent that it is now heavily tilted in favour of batters, to the point where even he or the late Australian leg-spin legend Shane Warne would have struggled against today’s power-hitters.

Asked how he or Warne would have fared on modern-day pitches, Muralitharan said the game has evolved and eras cannot be compared, as "power-hitting wasn't as great as now".



“We would have turned the ball, but we would have not made a big dent. We could have got one or two wickets, maybe they would have scored 40 runs easily, because wickets are so good and you need about three-four bowlers like that to contain to less than 200. I have played about 170 T20 games, but at that time the power hitting wasn’t as great as now. Nowadays, 50 runs is a great deal for a spinner, 40 runs means you’ve bowled well. The game has changed, we can’t compare the eras,” the former Sri Lanka spinner said.

Abhishek Sharma (45 off 24 balls), Travis Head (76 off 30 balls), Heinrich Klaasen (65 not out off 30 balls) and Salil Arora (30 not out off 10 balls) were ruthless with the bat while powering SRH to their fifth consecutive, and sixth overall win.

Muralitharan, the only bowler to take 800 wickets in Tests and the highest wicket-taker in ODIs with 534 scalps, urged bowlers struggling to control marauding batters in IPL 2026: accept the reality and adapt. “It’s very difficult for a bowler because these days every team has an opening pair that doesn’t care about in or out, they just go after the bowling. When we used to play, about 40 to 50 runs was a good score with one wicket losing in six overs, now the average is 70 to 80,” Muralitharan said at the post-match press conference on Wednesday.

Wednesday night's run-feast on a batting paradise at the Wankhede Stadium saw 492 runs being scored in just 38.4 overs, with the bowlers managing to take just nine wickets.

The paradigm shift, he stressed, came due to a different kind of mindset now, citing the example of Sunrisers' uncapped 23-year-old batter Salil Arora smashing a no-look six off world's premier pacer Jasprit Bumrah, who ended up conceding 0-54 in four overs.

“Even a good bowler goes for a six, even Bumrah goes for one or two balls. When a new boy Salil hits a six, it’s unbelievable — you don’t think someone with the calibre of Bumrah comes and a young boy will hit a six because he will think about how am I going to survive Bumrah. But nowadays, no — how am I going to hit a six, that’s their approach. Confidence levels have gone up because people have shown this is the way to play the modern game and youngsters are following that. So, for the bowlers, there is not much to say. They have to practise a lot and be as accurate as possible. On your day, you might do well, even if you do well sometimes you are on the receiving end because of the wicket and the conditions,” the 54-year-old said.

The off-spin legend pointed out that the art of spin bowling was declining as young spinners were no longer being taught to, and being able to turn the ball.

“They only try to bowl quicker, and not try to spin it. Because they are not getting that ability from a younger age, you can’t come to Under-19s and try to spin the ball because their muscle memory is already there. When you are age of 10, 11, 12, try to spin — we need to spin to beat the bat. But if you can’t spin, you see in training how batters face throwdowns and hit sixes. It looks like a throwdown bowler bowling at you.”

Making a statement which must worry cricket-lovers, Murali also said that it was now impossible for the IPL to strike a better balance between the bat and ball because it would get in the way of entertainment, which was the sole priority for all business houses, and entertainment meant plenty of boundaries.

“I don’t think pushing the boundary ropes, when the ball is flying over the ropes everywhere, will change things. If we give fair wickets, the spectators will say it’s become boring because the T20 followers want entertainment, so they want to see the fours and sixes. That’s why the tournament is built like that. It is a big business at the moment, sponsors and everything, so you will lose the sponsors and interest of the people if you change it.”

The 'arms race' to empower the batters to 'make it large' from ball one was started by SRH, and was here to stay, he asserted. “Sunrisers started this and now everyone is adapting. Bowlers will go back from this tournament and figure out how to contain. They will come up with something, and the batsmen will find something else — this is the way the modern cricketers are going.”
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