da esoccer bet： Muttiah Muralitharan added another to his kitty after taking 8-46. Here’s what he had to say after his matchwinning spell
Charlie Austin25-Jul-2005
Muttiah Muralitharan: took his 14th ten-wicket haul in Tests © Getty Images
Muttiah MuralitharanOn his performance
I bowled well but if Vaas had been bowling I would not have got 10 wicketsin the game. He is a great bowler, but unfortunately he got injured and itwas my turn. I just had to put the ball in the right places as they wereinexperienced cricketers.The younger guys gave us a good fight and theirteam spirit was obviously high. They wanted to do well. But the batting wasa little bit thinner.On whether he is going to race Warne again for records
As you can see on TV, Shane is bowling really well in the Ashes and I amnot thinking about records at the moment. I just want to play well and dowell for Sri Lanka now. I am not setting targets for wickets because I wantto focus on winning matches for Sri Lanka. The team doing well is the mostimportant thingOn his shoulder
The county stint helped me come through the injury. I had to play throughsome shoulder pain at the start but it got better and better My shoulder isperfectly alright now. There is always room for improvement but my bowlingis normal and the shoulder has not had any bad effectsOn his future
I think I can go on for at least three or four years. After the World Cup,if I can play just Test cricket, then I think I can continue until 2009. Butit depends on how well the Sri Lanka team is doing and how long I can takethe pressureShivnarine Chanderpaul
On his team’s performance
We have been doing a lot of work and it is going to take some time. We havesome young guys and they are learning – they will come around eventually.Our fielding and catching was very good and our bowling in patches, like atthe start of this test match, showed some fight.On whether he felt the pressure being the batting pillar
There is always pressure there and you just go out there to do your job as abatter. I was just looking to go out there and stick around so the otherguys could bat around me. It didn’t happen but that is just one of thosethings.On the ODI series
We are just going to put this behind us and concentrate on the one-dayseries. It is a shorter version of the game and our guys are accustomed toplaying one-day cricket so it should be better for us. We just want to comeout and play some positive cricket.Marvan Atapattu
On the positives to come out of the series
A lot of positives came out of the series but the main positive was themental toughness shown to fight ourselves back into the game. In most cases,in Sri Lanka, we are used to batting one innings and then trying to bowl outthe opposition twice, but it didn’t happen here and we had close battlesuntil the fourth innings.On the West Indies batting performance
They kept us guessing and gave us a bit of thinking to do in the dressingroom from time to time, which we enjoyed, and in the end it was more joyfulto overcome them because of that. They are a young side but they had nothingto lose. The pressure was on our side.On Sri Lanka’s reliance on Murali
There is a reliance on Murali but we cannot change that. We all know MuttiahMuralitharan’s abilities and until he retires we will depend on him.On the top order’s poor form
It is a matter of one innings in the end. We are not doing thingsdrastically wrong. You just need one innings to be back again in the runs.Kumar did it in style this time and hopefully, sooner rather than later, theothers will chip in to.On managing Vaas’s fitness
Vaasy has been carrying the burden for some time now. We have to manage himcarefully thinking about the cricket we are going to be playing in the nest12 months. We need him to be right and on the park when we really need himrather than throwing him into every game.