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The extraordinary bowling performances of Sri Lanka's foremost spinner Muthiah Muralitharan for English county Lancashire has not gone unnoticed.

'Wisden Cricket Monthly' in its August issue calls him ``Sri Lanka's supernatural off-spinner'' who is the latest to swagger in guns a-blazing.

Muralitharan's performances has been compared to that of Waqar Younis, the Pakistani fast bowler who took 113 wickets (avg. 14.65) for Surrey in 1991 and Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble who captured 105 wickets (avg. 20.40) for Northamptonshire in 1995.

Muralitharan's bowling figures in England, says the magazine ``adds up to the most devastating sequence of bowling analyses in the Championship since the war''.

During his last spell in England, with the 1998 Sri Lanka team Muralitharan took 34 wickets at 13.61, which included a match-winning 16 for 220 in the Oval Test.

In the current English season for Lancashire, Muralitharan has taken a further 55 wickets at 13.01 from five championship games (excluding his debut against Gloucestershire at Bristol where rain prevented him from bowling).

Thus overall, Muralitharan had 89 victims in nine first-class games in England at the remarkable average of 13.24. In that period he bowled in 16 innings and had a five-for or better in all but four of them, with nine hauls of six wickets or more.

In a study of his bowling, the magazine says ``it's when he returns to bowl for a second - or last - time that he wreaks most havoc. The longer he bowls, the more accurate and penetrative he becomes''.

In the first two matches he took 24 wickets, but yet finished on the losing side. Lancashire however got their act together and in Muralitharan's third ten wicket haul, they beat Essex at Old Trafford.

Since then Lancashire have been on a winning streak, going on to beat Glamorgan and then Hampshire to improve their prospects of playing in the top division next season when the 18 counties will be split into two leagues for the first time.

In the Hampshire game, Muralitharan took only a solitary wicket in the first innings, but roared back in the second to take 7 for 114 and also pass fifty wickets for the season in only his sixth match.

Muralitharan is likely to appear for Lancashire in only one more championship match before he returns home to tackle world champions Australia in a series of three tests and a one-day triangular series which also features India.

Muralitharan in 1999 County Championships

Opponents                O       M       R      W

v Gloucestershire       -       -       -       -
v Warwickshire          34.5    16      44      7
                        34      13      73      7
v Surrey                41.5    15      87      6
                        31.5    10      67      4
v Essex                 30       8      73      7
                        34.2    11      61      6
v Glamorgan             48       9     104      6
                        40.3    14      72      4
v Hampshire             12       4      21      1
                        48.2    11     114      7
TOTAL                  355.4   111     716     55

Average 13.01, 5wInns 7, 10wM 4, St/Rt 39 balls per wicket.