Following Muttiah Muralitharan's history-making 709th wicket during the Kandy Test, commentators and news reporters alike blurted out that it was a feat which would never be surpassed. Sounds like folly . . . records are there to be broken and always will be broken, surely?

But maybe the claim isn't that outlandish: the main thing supporting him is that all the currently active Test bowlers are 400 wickets or more behind Murali (with the exception of the redoubtable Anil Kumble). But another - and perhaps more pertinent - reason why Murali's record may stand the Test of time was personified over in Kolkata, in the shape of Pakistan's Misbah ul-Haq.

At the grand old age of 33 Misbah's Test career is belatedly flourishing, as his unbeaten 161 looks to have staved off defeat for his team. He made his Test debut in 2001 and had such a torrid time in his five Tests between 2001 and 2003 that when he made his return this year he had an average of 13: that's about the same as his partner in crime today, Mohammad Sami. But in the past four matches he has more than tripled his collection of Test runs; his average now a healthy 35.

'We still have several precocious talents, mainly young bowlers who in theory have both the talent and the time to reach Muralitharan's record'


Misbah, at 33, is a cricketing pensioner, but now has the technical abilities and calm temperament to replace his namesake Inzamam. He may only have three or four years left to play at the international level, but he now seems equipped to spend those years as Pakistan's third world class batsman. As a 26-year-old he was painfully unready to face the rampaging Australians and was dropped, seemingly never to return. But those years in the wilderness have been traded for his rich vein of form in the Test arena now.

There are few players who have the genius of a Sachin Tendulkar, and it increasingly seems the case that players hone their skills in the county and regional matches, sacrificing quantity for quality when it comes to international cricket. Many of the break-through players from the last two years are of an older vintage than would be expected: England's Ryan Sidebottom, Australia's Phil Jacques, Stuart Clark and Michael Hussey, South Africa's Ashwell Prince and Sri Lanka's Chamara Silva to name a few.

None of these players is going to come close to playing 100 Tests, scoring 10,000 runs or taking 700 wickets. But they all look set to have a very successful handful of years at the game's pinnacle. Hussey in particular is maintaining a batting average inferior only to Bradman, and Stuart Clark took his first 50 wickets at a cost of less than 19.

So are Test debutants getting older across the board? We still have several precocious talents, mainly young bowlers who in theory have both the talent and the time to reach Muralitharan's record. Mohammad Asif, Dale Steyn, Lasith Malinga, Monty Panesar, Piyush Chawla - they've all had varying degrees of early success; enough to indicate that they could finish their careers with more than 400 Test wickets.

But what undoubtedly counts against them and will likely prevent them from having such career longevity is the amount of international cricket played today. Already Asif and his pace bowling compatriot Umar Gul are suffering with injuries: chronically it seems, in the case of Gul. The act of bowling a cricket ball is already an unnatural one for the human body, and unless the young bowler's action is perfectly tuned and repeatable the injuries will continue to come. The future already looks bleak, as it does for Andrew Flintoff, whose bowling action has always put an unsustainable amount of strain on his front foot.

If one of the current crop of young seam bowlers is to get near the benchmark set by the bulletproof Glenn McGrath, they will have to be very carefully handled, have a sustainable and economical action and most importantly have a naturally robust body. Given the volume of international cricket now played, perhaps it is better for a seam bowler to come late to Test cricket, having grooved their action and conditioned their body in county cricket.

It seems inevitable that any bowler likely to come close to Muralitharan's record in future years will be a spinner. There is much less stress on a spin bowler's body and they can bowl for longer periods, but even then the possibility for injuries is high. Danish Kaneria is a leg-spinner of some talent, but Pakistan's reliance on him means that he bowls an unsustainable amount of overs: 418 in 2007 at the time of writing - that's 32 overs per innings. His lack of success has been conspicuous lately, and it's possible that if his workload was to ease, he would claim more wickets.

It's also worth remembering that the three names at the top of the highest wicket-takers list are three geniuses: Muralitharan, Warne and Kumble. To reach those heights you need not just a long career free from injuries, but you also need to be very, very good: Those three names could be there for some time.