Has to be Warne I suppose. 650 wickets don't happen by accident.

true but if peel and briggs had played enough tests im sure they would of taken 600 plus wickets too....ah its all speculation i guess!

Warnie by a street ... i started to read this thread and after a couple of pages had to stop ... forget about the person think about him as a bowler....... some joker said that Murili doesnt have Mcgrath or Gillespie to help him what an absolute joke that is. ...he is the leading wicket taker in the world because he is a great bowler just dont give him a mobile phone

Karthik,I think you might be just a teeny weeny bit biased, maybe Viv Richards might have said it,but my money say's that 90% of batsmen that have faced Warne and Gupte,would vote for Warne.

People all over the world have heard of Warne, not too many have heard of Gupte,and as for saying Gupte was unplayable,650 batsmen will say that about Warne!!!!!

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Just remind me,who holds the ashes now?


When England say "it's only a game" they are always loosing

Very nice posts by friends so far...my vote goes to Abdul Qadir as for me he was the one who revived the leg spin.
He just took over 200 wickets but on the other hand there was not a lot of cricket being played in those days like now where we have about 12-14 test matches in a year.

Well Gooch says that he is a finer bowler than Warne but thats going back to that whole discussion that we had about Sobers.

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Bill Ponsford - The only one who could play in Bradman’s company and make it a duet.

First of all, it is Sobers (the greatest all rounder the world has ever seen) and not Richards rates Gupte as the best spin bowler. As for Warne taking so many wickets, who knows if Gupte had played as many matches and more importantly bowled to the poor quality of batsmen as Warne has bowled to in the last decade, Gupte may have ended up with far more wickets than 650.

Warne has played nearly all his test cricket against the top countries. In 140 test matches he has player two against Bangladesh ( the series in Bangladesh just a month ago) where he took 11 wickets and has played Zimbabwe once and took 6 wickets here are a list of his wickets against each country

Country Mat Wickets Ave
Bangladesh 2 11 27.27
England 31 172 22.30
ICC World XI 1 6 11.83
India 14 43 47.18
New Zealand 20 103 24.37
Pakistan 15 90 20.17
South Africa 24 130 24.16
Sri Lanka 13 59 25.54
West Indies 19 65 29.95
Zimbabwe 1 6 22.83

Now Warne has 685 test wickets the most ever and the only man who looks like he can beat it at the moment is Muralitharan who if his body holds up he will most likely pass Warne but the only difference between Warne and Muralitharan is these statistics

Muralitharan Vs
Country Mat Wickets Ave
Bangladesh 6 50 12.52
Zimbabwe 14 87 16.86

Im not really sure how we can compare Gupte to Warne. You cant compare some one who has played 140 matches and taken 685 wickets with a guy who played 36 matches and took 149 wickets and they are also from different times. I will give it a go though.

Warne (1992-2006)
Gupte (1951-1961)

Warnes advantages are playing sides like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (but as i said earlier Warne has barely played against either sides) Im not sure that people are playing against better or worse batsman these days the best batsman average around the same from every era (except Bradman). One real advantage that i can think of is it Warne has had better training and technology to help his bowling but i think that the technology has been more of a disadvantage with the ability of other countries studying his deliveries so they can pick his slider, wrong-un, Zooter, Flipper and top spinners (which is one thing that Gupte never had to worry about). Also it seems to be harder these days for bowlers with all the bat technology, Bats these days are bigger but due to them being so well made they feel really light and the technology with the bats seem to getting out of hand with the titanium and graphite rods in the Grey Nicholls bats, aswell and the graphite backing on the Kookaburra bats which allows the batsman to hit the ball a lot harder consistenly (but batting averages have not really gone up or down). The only real advantage that Gupte had was the conditions of the pitches they were a lot more helpful for the bowlers (mainly spinners) and in todays game all the pitches are a lot more useful for the batsman to go out and score a lot of runs. Also he player for India whos wickets are renouned for being deadly to bat to spinners on.

Honestly it is two hard to compare these two players due them being from different generations but bordering on 700 test wickets most people would go with Warne (or Muralitharan). The main question is that in today's game if a young spinner came in and played 20 matches and took a radiculous amount of wickets ( 20 matches 150 wickets) and injured himself and never bowled again, would people say that he was better than Warne without seeing him bowl. IMO People who watched him bowl would say that he had the ability to be as good as Warne but know one will ever know. I am also aware that it was Sobers not Richards and everyone who is a member of this forum would know that Sobers is the greatest ever allrounder (possibally the greatest cricketer to ever play).

One great attribute about Warne is his ability to keep bowling over many years which allowed him to get so many wickets, the main thing that is amazing about SK Warne is that with other Great Bowlers around him he is still able to get so many wickets. If Warne and McGrath were not in the same team they would both have a lot more wickets than they do. Could anyone imagine if Sri Lanka did not have Vaas (geez how many wickets would Muralitharan have).

Career statistics (6 ball overs)
Mat O R W BBI BBM Ave Econ SR 5 10
140 6542.5 17297 685 8/71 12/128 25.25 2.64 57.3 36 10 - Warne
36 1880.4 4403 149 9/102 10/223 29.55 2.34 75.7 12 1 - Gupte
103 5713.5 13630 611 9/51 16/220 22.30 2.38 56.1 51 14 - Muralitharan

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Bill Ponsford - The only one who could play in Bradman’s company and make it a duet.

This is precisely my point that it is difficult to compare two spin bowlers (or any bowlers for that matter) from different eras. Cricket has become a multi billion (perhaps trillion!) dollar business from just being a sport. Along with this change a lot of other things have changed in the game and quality of batting is definately one of them.

I think the reason that Warne got more votes is because he is more of a matchwinner than Murali. But I think Murali is the better bowler per se by a small margin because of his greater variety.