With Paul Collingwood’s dismissal in England’s first innings at Lord’s, Anil Kumble became the bowler with the highest number of lbw dismissals in Test cricket

Mathew Varghese23-Jul-2007With Paul Collingwood’s dismissal in England’s first innings in the
first Test at Lord’s, Anil Kumble became the bowler with the highest
number of lbw dismissals in Test cricket. Kumble has now trapped
139 batsmen leg-before, ahead of Shane Warne, who held the record with
138 such wickets.

More than a quarter of Kumble’s Test victims have been dismissed
leg-before – a significantly high proportion – though he ranks way below
Australia’s pacer Terry Alderman, who has 34.12% of his 170 Test wickets
coming by way of lbws.

Graham Gooch has been dismissed lbw the highest number of
times in Tests. Incidentally, Alderman accounted for
five of those dismissals. Three of Gooch’s England opening partners –
Alec Stewart, Michael Atherton and David Gower (one innings only) are not far
behind.

As a proportion of total dismissals, Roshan Mahanama figures in the list
for both Tests (minimum 50 matches) and ODIs (minimum 100 matches). Other
batsmen to have been trapped in front often include Craig McMillan
and Michael Holding, who would have preferred appearing in the
bowlers’ list.

Daren Ganga missed
out on the above table since he’s only played 45 Tests. Of the 78 times
that he’s been out, lbws have accounted for 25, a percentage of 32.05. In the
recently concluded Test series against West Indies, Ganga was out lbw to
Ryan Sidebottom in both innings of the second Test at Headingley while
Steve Harmison had him stuck in front of the stumps twice during the third Test at Old Trafford.The ODI table is topped by West Indies’ Roger Harper, while New
Zealand’s lower-order batsmen, Chris Harris and Brendon McCullum, have
been trapped in front plenty of times as well.

The current crop of left-arm bowlers show remarkable success with lbw
decisions in ODIs, with Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan, Chaminda Vaas and Mohammad
Rafique having the highest percentages of leg-before dismissals (minimum
100 wickets). Surprisingly, Wasim Akram misses out and so does Waqar
Younis, the man famous for his toe-crushing yorkers.

Another left-arm spinner from Bangladesh, Abdur Razzak, has 19 leg-before
dismissals in his career-haul of 76 dismissals. Pathan’s ability to swing the ball into the right-handers makes him successful with leg-before appeals in both forms of the game, with 30.77% of his 91 Test wickets coming in the same manner.