5 Bowlers With Most Test Wickets On Home Soil

For a bowler to pick a wicket in Test cricket is like being rewarded for their perseverance throughout their enduring spells. Even for the most skilful and decorated bowler it t takes a lot of patience and hard work to get one wicket despite the fielding position being way more aggressive than we see in the white-ball formats.

Yet bowlers give out their every ounce of sweat and enthusiasm to get the best results for their team and many end up picking five-fors or more than it.

For a bowler to adapt to his home conditions takes a lot of practice and determination to acclimatise to the pitches in their respective country.

A bowler is likely to impress with staggering numbers on his debut at home but it takes more effort than we think to maintain consistency in picking wickets throughout their career.

Let us take you’ll to look at the top 5 bowlers who have picked the most Test wickets in their home country.

5 Bowlers With Most Test Wickets On Home Soil

5) Shane Warne (319)

How do you imagine seeing Shane Warne in a list and not talk about the ‘ball of the century’ he bowled on June 4, 1993, that not only stunned English batsman Mike Gatting but the entire cricket world then and now as well when you look at the dismissal.

On a damp pitch that had a few patches, Warne, bowling over the wicket, pitched his leg spinner way outside the leg stump and went on to hit the top of off stump. For a moment Gatting was not able to understand what had happened and it took him time to process on his wicket.

Warne claimed 708 Test wickets in his 15 years of international cricket and retired as the highest Test wicket-taker in 2002, only for Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan to break his record in the same year. 

4) Stuart Broad (314)

Stuart Broad has been England’s second-highest wicket-taker with 524 Test wickets, only behind his best friend James Anderson with whom he has shared the new ball over the last many years.

In July 2020, Broad became the fourth fast bowler and seventh overall to achieve 500 Test wickets in the third Test against West Indies in Manchester.

Broad’s strongest weapon is the nip-backer, which he skids sharply and bends into the right-handed batsman to deceive them. The Nottinghamshire bowler dazzled the Australians on his home ground as he bowled a marvellous spell of 8/15 to bowl them out for 60 runs.

3) Anil Kumble (350)

Anil Kumble is the only second bowler in the history of the game to have picked 10 wickets in a single inning of a Test match.

The Karnataka-born leg-spinner on February 7, 1999, entered the record books as he completed a perfect 10-wicket haul against Pakistan to join English off-spinner, Jim Laker, in the limited list.

With 619 Test wickets, Kumble is India’s highest Test wicket-taker and fourth overall in the world. He retired from international cricket in 2008 and his last match was against Australia, where he picked three wickets to complete his 350 Test wickets on home soil.

2) James Anderson (400)

Anderson is the best example to define the quote ‘age is just a number’, as it is unbelievable that even at the age of 39 he can still bowl long spells and get wickets on regular basis.

In the Headingley Test, he toppled the top-order of the Indian team in the first hour of the match to put England in a commanding position, it just shows how hungry the Lancashire bowler is to perform at the peak of his career.

Anderson made an incredible debut against Zimbabwe back in 2003, when he notched up the figures of 5/73 at Lord’s and in the second Test against India he achieved his seventh five-wicket haul at the particular venue.

Anderson has broked one after another record in the last few years and his latest achievement was to surpass Indian spinner Anil Kumble’s tally of 619 Test wickets and now with 630 wickets, he is the third-highest wicket-taker just behind Shane Warne (708) and Muralitharan in Test cricket.

1) Muttiah Muralitharan (493)

The former Sri Lankan spinner holds the record of the fastest bowler to achieve 400, 500, 600 and 700 Test wickets. Muralitharan held the number one spot in the International Cricket Council’s player rankings for Test bowlers for a record period of 1,711 days spanning 214 Test matches.

Muralitharan played his last Test against India in 2010 in Galle and accomplished an unthinkable task as he needed eight wickets to reach the milestone of becoming the first bowler to claim 800 Test scalps.

Muralitharan took 67 five-wicket hauls with his best figures of 9/51 came up against Zimbabwe in 2002 in Kandy and it will be an arduous task for any bowler to reach his tally but you never know what changes in cricket so be relaxed and enjoy every moment of the oldest format.