One of the very few things that give cricketers the legendary tag to their name is longevity. Playing for more years can only mean they have played consistent cricket. One cannot play for a long time without delivering what the team wants consistently. A bowler picking more than 500 wickets in Test cricket is similar to a batsman scoring an aggregate of 10000 runs in a single format.
In fact, it’s quite rarer and a bigger achievement than that.
Only nine players in the history of 100+ years long Test cricket has break the barrier of 500 Test scalps so far. The next closest to this list is Mitchell Starc, who is still a long way behind the milestone number of 500.
With the recent inclusion of Ravichandran Ashwin into this elite club, here is a blog for all these who went past the magical number – 500 Test Wickets milestone.
Bowlers with 500 Test Wickets
| Player | Matches | Wickets | BBI | 5W/10W |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muttiah Muralitharan (SL) | 133 | 800 | 9/51 | 67/22 |
| Shane Warne (AUS) | 145 | 708 | 8/71 | 37/10 |
| James Anderson (ENG) | 188 | 704 | 7/42 | 32/3 |
| Anil Kumble (IND) | 132 | 619 | 10/74 | 35/8 |
| Stuart Broad (ENG) | 167 | 604 | 8/15 | 20/3 |
| Glenn McGrath (AUS) | 124 | 563 | 8/24 | 29/3 |
| Nathan Lyon (AUS) | 136 | 553 | 8/50 | 24/5 |
| Ravichandran Ashwin (IND) | 106 | 537 | 7/59 | 37/8 |
| Courtney Walsh (WI) | 132 | 519 | 7/37 | 22/3 |
Key Stats
Among these eight bowlers, there are four spinners (interestingly, two off-spinners, a leg-breaker, and a leg-spinner) and four fast bowlers.
The spin duo – Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne tops the overall list of leading wicket-takers in Test cricket.
Three bowlers from Australia, two from England, and one each from India, Sri Lanka, and West Indies have achieved this feat so far.
Out of these 8, Walsh, McGrath, Warne, Murali, Lyon, and Kumble are the only seven bowlers in Test cricket to bowl more than 5000 Overs in Test cricket.
Other notable stats is, all these eight bowlers are right-handed. The record for the highest wicket-taking left-handed bowlers belongs to Rangana Herath of Sri Lanka, who has taken 433 wickets and ranks 10th overall. He is followed by Wasim Akram (414) of Pakistan and Daniel Vettori (362) of New Zealand.
Every bowler in the above list has at least played one Test in the 21st century. The highest wicket-taking Test bowler, who has not played a single Test in the 2000s, is Kapil Dev, who played from 1978-1994 and took 434 wickets.
The Sri Lankan bowler, Muralitharan convincingly leads the top Test wicket-taker chart with a lead of 92 wickets from the 2nd ranked Australian Warne.
