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Muttiah Muralitharan
Muttiah Muralitharan played for Sri Lanka from 1992 to 2010 and finished his career with 800 Test wickets, the most of any bowler in the history of the format by a wide margin — the next closest bowler finished more than 100 wickets behind him, a gap that's unusual for a career record this significant. His unusual bowling action, involving a naturally bent arm from a childhood injury, drew repeated scrutiny and biomechanical testing throughout his career, including formal challenges to his action's legality in 1995 and 2004 — testing that ultimately confirmed his action fell within legal limits, but the controversy shadowed even his most dominant seasons. Muralitharan also holds the record for most wickets in One Day International cricket, meaning he finished his career as the all-time leading wicket-taker in both major forms of the international game simultaneously, a dual record matched on the batting side only by Sachin Tendulkar. Muralitharan was central to a golden era of Sri Lankan cricket, including the country's 1996 Cricket World Cup title, and his wicket tally, more than a decade after his retirement, still sits as the standard other spin bowlers are measured against, with no active bowler realistically positioned to threaten it.
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Don Bradman
Don Bradman played for Australia from 1928 to 1948 and finished his Test career with a batting average of 99.94, a number so far ahead of every other batsman in cricket history — the next closest all-time Test average sits more than 30 points lower — that statisticians regularly cite it as the single most dominant record in any major sport. His famous final Test innings, in 1948 against England, needed just four runs to finish his career average at a clean 100; he was bowled for a duck, second ball, meaning the final average of 99.94 has become as much a piece of cricket folklore as any of his actual scores. Bradman scored 29 Test centuries in just 52 matches, a rate of centuries per match that no other prolific Test batsman has matched, and England's cricket establishment was so concerned by his dominance during the 1932-33 Ashes series that it developed "Bodyline," a deliberately intimidating short-pitched bowling tactic aimed at his body, specifically to try to contain him. Bradman's dominance is frequently used as a cross-sport statistical reference point — his average sits roughly four standard deviations above the mean for elite Test batsmen, a gap that sports statisticians say has no real parallel among the greatest performers in other major sports, baseball included.
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