I'd go along with that. They both brought a heck of a lot to the game, Murali with his infectious smile and lovely demeanour, ... a marvellous advert for Sri Lankan cricket ... said M was the nicest person in cricket, along with Robin Smith.
I am very glad that Murali had the courage to come back to Australia after saying he'd never come again after some poor treatment from a handful of disrespectful yobbos and unfortunately our much despised PM at the time (John Howard) back in 2004.
It was worth coming back - on the 2007 tour and in his one T20 season here he was treated to the same sort of reception as Sachin Tendulkar in his last couple of tours here - Sachin joked that in Australia he would walk out to bat and immediately look up at the scoreboard to check if he was on 0 or 100 because that's what the crowd sounded like.
Since then Murali has actually spent some time coaching here for Cricket Australia working with our best T20 spinners in the run up to the last World T20, the use of spin bowling being an area that Australia so far has troubled to crack in T20 (it says a lot that Johan Botha is the best T20 spinner in Australia) on an international level.
... Warne with his psychological powers over so many batsmen. ...
I used to love watching Warne torture an English batsman by spending an exaggeratedly long time adjusting his field, coming in to bowl and aborting at the last moment to make one last change, all before bowling a standard leg break! This had the best effect when he did it on the last ball of the day.
It was nice of the English media to give him a hand with their obsession about his mystery balls (they were all just straight ones with different seam presentation) which definitely didn't help Atherton's troubles with him. It's a pity that the English papers are so much more patriotic these days!
... an excellent slipper and pretty good batsman.
I missed one word in my post - when I wrote better average, I meant to write better batting average. Contributing usefully with the bat was something that Warne was always very proud of, and over 3000 Test runs with a highest score of 99 (given out on a no ball) is nothing to sniff at for a specialist bowler.
Fielding is extremely important for every player in Australian cricket, even to the point of Mark Cosgrove getting fired by South Australia and replaced with an inferior batsman for costing too many runs in the field and with his slow running between wickets (he would get some hilarious sledges about his weight from even the home fans) though the ground staff did offer him a chance to stay at Adelaide Oval as the heavy pitch roller. That only South Africa was taking fielding as seriously as Australia was a big part of our 1999-2005 world domination years, but T20 has led everyone else to catch up over the last ten years - and I think the game is better for it when even the longer formats will often see players diving and sliding in the outfield to prevent boundaries.
... Murali was a marvellous advert for Sri Lankan cricket and Warnie, though I am sure he was jealous of his success, said M was the nicest person in cricket, along with Robin Smith.
I think their are elements of both careers of which the other could have been a little jealous. I already mentioned success against India for Muralidaran and success in non-turning conditions for Warne.
Murali had more 10 wicket hauls (and against every Test team, a unique feat for the current era with ten Test playing nations) and better stats in the fourth innings, but Warne had a Test hat trick where he did not.
Success against tougher teams is probably in favour of Warne. While he obviously never had to play against Australia, neither did he get a significant number of wickets against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh (17 wickets in 3 matches vs 176 in 25 matches).
Performances against each other's teams favour Warne - they had exactly the same number of wickets (59 each) but with Warne having a better average and strike rate.
The importance to the team is definitely in favour of Murali. Warne took 27% of Australia's wickets in his Tests (he played alongside some truly great bowlers like McGrath and Lee who had 873 wickets between them) while Murali took 40% and all too often was the only thing standing between Sri Lanka and massive losing margins.
The ODI careers of both were very different. Both achieved one World Cup victory but that's where it stops being easy to compare them - Warne quit ODI cricket in 2003 while Murali played on for another eight years during which the nature of the game changed significantly. I don't think it's possible to fairly compare any off spinner with any leg spinner in ODI cricket though, these days it's more about speed and flight than turn which is what made Graeme Swann so hard to get away.
I do wonder whether Murali might have been jealous of Warne's well-timed retirement from international cricket, which finished with him getting the second-highest number of wickets of all the bowlers in a triumphant 5-0 series win over England. Warne could have played on for 3-4 years (maybe changing the outcome of the 2009 and 2010-11 Ashes series?) and gone well past Murali's eventual total of 800 wickets, but he didn't have anything left to prove. Like Sachin Tendulkar a couple of years later, I think Murali played on a bit too long for his own good, and he might wish that he had retired earlier while he was still Sri Lanka's number one spinner.
It is very fitting that Tests between Australia and Sri Lanka are played for the Warne-Muralidaran Trophy. Probably the most equally matched case of a series trophy being named after a great player from each side.
... Warne was also an excellent captain when given the chance (for Hampshire anyway), ... Warne is also a very astute newspaper commentator - I don't do Sky so can't comment on his utterances there.
He's one of the better commentators on Nine (they now have an overlapping commentary panel with Sky for The Ashes) and a very good analyst of bowling and fielding tactics - probably a legacy of being the best captain Australia never had.
His captaincy of the Rajasthan Royals in the first year of the IPL was amazing - he used the Moneyball approach of picking a team without too many notable stars and falling well short of the salary cap, but they somehow won the first edition of the IPL which still remains the only edition I actually watched - Indian T20 was more like cricket back then.
).
