Murali's Greatness: a never-ending cricketing controversy

Muralitharan has announced that the first test match between Sri Lanka and India would be his last test match as he wants to preserve himself for the forthcoming world cup that is scheduled to be hosted in the sub-continent. The decision is just a bit surprising considering that he is on the verge of breaking the 800 test wicket barrier; his currently tally being a tantalizing close affair at 792 scalps. Further, the tongues are already wagging about the legacy of the Lankan spin maestro. The only thing that I would like to highlight is that his achievements should not be looked down upon by Warne's die-hard supporters simply because both of them were able to extract a lot of their victims from conditions that were heavily loaded in their favor. While Murali playing on slow pitches at home

was very obvious, many people don't seem to notice that Warne got a lot of his wickets by playing endless series of tests against West Indies and England sides that are among the two, poorest players of spin bowling in the last decade of cricket. If Murali got pitches to his liking, Warne got opponents who were notoriously bad players of quality spin....I would recommend some introspection before making judgmental decisions about Murali's "achievements" (the double-quote pun non intended).

Yuvraj's Mommy does the talking: does it get more absurd??

All those who have been following cricket in the sub-continent are largely accustomed to every aspect of cricket being magnified and repeatedly put through a post-mortem like exercise. So when the entire story about the Indian team's pub-brawling came to the fore, it was just a matter of time before the entire matter would get pumped-up beyond reasonability. However, what I was not prepared for was Yuvraj Singh's mother sitting comfortably on her couch and trying to explain how his very 'innocent' son should not be made the scape-goat every time the team loses for some other reason. Here I was believing all along that
the concept of having senior players in the team was that they led by example and given the T20 squad that India had, Yuvi was certainly the senior player, wasn't he?  Wait, it gets even more ridiculous when I saw some cricketing "experts" trying to explain what M/O Yuvraj Singh was trying to say!! I mean if there is some sort of stupidity being committed, it is necessary to make the entire matter seem even more ridiculous by having someone to explain it or simplify it?? This is what cricket has been reduced to...just wait until aunty cricket hits us!!