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Frustrated with his failure to provide Sri Lanka the breakthroughs in the ongoing Test series against India, ace off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan says he is no longer the dreaded bowler he used to be and might even retire completely before the 2011 World Cup.
Muralitharan, who has already announced his Test retirement after next year's series against the West Indies, said he may walk into the sunset before the 2011 World Cup in the sub-continent. Sri Lanka is currently trailing 0-1 in the three-match Test series against India, the final game of which starts on December 2 in Mumbai.
"I am 37 years old and I can't bowl as much as those days because after 15-16 overs I get tired. But I will try and play a little bit of One-Day cricket that's only 10 overs to bowl. If I find everything is not going well I might retire from both forms of the game before the World Cup," Muralitharan said.
"Everything depends on how much my body can take. My body may hold for One-Day cricket because it's a fifty-over game. In Test cricket it's a little bit harder because I have always been a threat to other sides. At the moment it's not looking like that because others are playing me well. I think I made the right decision to retire from Test cricket at the end of the West Indies series next year," he was quoted as saying by The Nation.
Muralitharan said his body now struggles to respond to the demands of international cricket's grind and time has come for Sri Lanka to look beyond him to get the results.
"Two to three years ago it was not like this. Now you have niggles here and there and my groin is not the same as it used to be. We got the worst conditions of bowling in the last two Tests. We didn't have the bowlers and that was one of the factors. But that's the way cricket goes, everything won't work for you in your favour," said Muralitharan, who needs just 12 wickets to become the first bolwer to get 800 Test scalps.
"There was a time the team was dependent on me for wickets but it has to change. Others must also get a chance. Rangana (Herath) is bowling well and (Ajantha) Mendis. They will have to carry through in the years to come.
"Whatever I did in the last 18 years is not possible for anybody to achieve because I ran through sides alone getting five-for in an innings 66 times and 22 ten-wicket match hauls.
One single spinner cannot achieve that but as a collective unit of bowlers they can take wickets against oppositions. We have fast bowlers and spinners and they are good enough to do that."
Muralitharan, who is on his fourth and last tour of India, has been struggling to come to terms with the placid Indian pitches and the hosts' strong batting line-up that has treated him harshly in the series so far.
The world's highest Test wicket taker's bowling figures after the two Tests so far are ordinary to say the least - five wickets for 396 runs - at an average 79.20.
"I've played only seven Test matches this year, two against Bangladesh, two against Pakistan where it was a dead rubber series and two against New Zealand, when I really did bowl well in the second innings of the second Test with a groin injury. Whenever the side wanted a breakthrough I've got it for them in the New Zealand series. I don't know why it's not happening here," he said.
"But, every cricketer has to go through disappointments. Everything you want to happen in life won't happen, something will be missing. Looking back I can say what an amazing career I have had but if we can't win in India that's it. Life has to go on," he said.