by The Professor » Sat Jul 15, 2017 9:55 pm
Is it about time that we started valuing Herath as one of the best bowlers of all time?
His thirtieth fivefer today puts him one above Glenn McGrath and into fifth in the alltime list. With Herath having retired from One Day and T20 cricket he can focus all his attention on Test cricket and maybe placing himself second on that all time list.
You see there is a very tightly packed cluster of world class bowlers that sit between second and fourth in the all time list of fivefer takers and, with a couple of years worth of Tests in him, Herath might be able to usurp them. The thing is that these names are fairly big hitting in nature. Fourth in the list is Anil Kumble with 35, then comes Richard Hadlee with 36 and then Shane Warne with 37. This means that Herath is 8 fivefers away from placing himself firmly as second on the list. You'd imagine that fellow Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan's 67 might be a tad beyond his ken.
To me, Herath seems like an anomaly on that list but is that unfair? Is he up there with the Kumble and Hadlees of this world and we just undervalue him?
"It has been said of the unseen army of the dead, on their everlasting march, that when they are passing a rural cricket ground the Englishman falls out of the ranks for a moment to look over the gate and smile."