Matt Prior has revealed that the ECB sent him footage of Muttiah Muralitharan before England’s tour of Sri Lanka, and that he spotted a cue in the video that helped him pick the legendary spinner’s variations. After a couple of Test matches, Muralitharan himself walked up to Prior and acknowledged it.
Speaking on talkSPORT’s Following On show, Prior described the moment the ECB’s video analysis gave him an edge against the greatest wicket-taker in cricket history.
“The ECB sent you the footage and I suddenly I looked at it and spotted something!”
Matt Prior, talkSPORT, July 28, 2026
Prior did not reveal the exact technical detail he identified. But the fact that he found it through footage rather than live play is significant. Video analysis allows a player to pause, rewind, and isolate specific moments in a bowler’s action that are impossible to catch at match speed.
What made this revelation remarkable was Muralitharan’s response. The Sri Lankan spinner, who finished his career with 800 Test wickets and 534 ODI wickets, rarely acknowledged that anyone had figured him out. Yet after a couple of Tests in the 2007-08 series, he approached Prior directly.
“After a couple of Test Matches, he came up to me and said ‘You’re picking me?'”
Matt Prior, talkSPORT, July 28, 2026
For a bowler of Muralitharan’s stature to notice and confront a batsman about reading his variations tells its own story. It means Prior’s body language, footwork, or shot selection had changed noticeably enough for Muralitharan to sense something was different.
🧐 “The ECB sent you the footage & I suddenly I looked at it & spotted something!”
✔️ “After a couple of Test Matches, he came up to me & said ‘You’re picking me?'”@MattPrior13 reveals how to managed to pick Muttiah Muralitharan’s variations 🤝
👉 https://t.co/hcCyamgSty 👈 pic.twitter.com/cUhV8zLMTG
— talkSPORT Cricket (@Cricket_TS) July 27, 2026
Insider Read:
There is a detail in this story that most people will miss. Prior was not just a batsman facing Muralitharan. He was a wicketkeeper.
A keeper stands directly behind the stumps, watching the bowler’s hand, wrist, and release point from an angle no batsman ever sees. When you keep wicket to spin, you are trained to read the ball out of the hand because you need to anticipate which way it will turn to position your gloves correctly. You do this ball after ball, over after over, sometimes for entire sessions.
That means Prior had two opportunities to study Muralitharan’s action during a match. First from behind the stumps while keeping wicket, where he could watch the hand and wrist repeatedly without the pressure of having to play a shot. Then from the crease as a batsman, where he could apply what he had already observed.
When the ECB sent him footage, Prior was not watching it with a batsman’s eyes alone. He was watching it with a keeper’s eyes, trained to read the smallest differences in a bowler’s release. That is a significant advantage that a pure batsman studying the same footage would not have had. The cue he spotted may well have been something visible only from the angle a keeper occupies, something he then carried to the crease with him.
Few Have Ever Cracked Muralitharan’s Code
Muralitharan’s variations were built on an unorthodox action and an exceptionally quick wrist. His off-break, doosra, and top-spinner were delivered with minimal visible change, making it almost impossible for batsmen to read him consistently.
Very few players in cricket history managed to decode him. Sachin Tendulkar was one. In his autobiography “Playing It My Way,” Tendulkar wrote that he noticed Muralitharan’s thumb was on top of the ball when bowling the doosra, and positioned below for regular off-spin. Tendulkar shared this insight with his teammates, and Muralitharan himself later confirmed it.
Muralitharan acknowledged Tendulkar’s ability at the trailer launch of his biopic “800,” saying that while some players had success against him, very few actually read him. He specifically named Tendulkar as someone who did, and noted that even Rahul Dravid, one of his favourite players, never managed to read his variations.
MS Dhoni demonstrated a different kind of reading ability. Former BCCI selector Sanjay Jagdale revealed that during the 2007 World Cup, Dhoni told him he could pick Muralitharan’s doosra from the dugout. Jagdale confirmed that Dhoni was consistently correct in identifying which delivery was the doosra while watching from the pavilion.
Prior’s method was different from both. Tendulkar used live observation of the grip. Dhoni used instinct and exceptional eyesight from the sidelines. Prior used institutional support from the ECB and video analysis of a bowler’s action to find a cue before the series even began. It was a planned, systematic approach to solving the most difficult puzzle in world cricket at the time.
Prior had also prepared physically. He underwent laser eye surgery before England’s 2007-08 tour of Sri Lanka, specifically to improve his ability to spot the ball. In the 1st Test at Kandy, where Muralitharan broke Shane Warne’s all-time Test wicket record by claiming his 709th victim, Prior scored 63 in the second innings and held Muralitharan at bay for over two hours.
Prior described the challenge of facing Muralitharan during that series, saying that while everyone had their own technique to pick the spinner’s variations, Muralitharan’s quick wrist made it extremely difficult to see any change. He said he looked for the flight of the ball, whether it was slower or quicker, and sometimes tried to read the seam. The last resort, he said, was watching it off the pitch, but by then it could be too late.
Prior played 79 Tests for England between 2007 and 2014, scoring 4,099 runs at an average of 40.18. He was the first English wicketkeeper to score a century on Test debut, making 126 against the West Indies at Lord’s in May 2007. Despite averaging 41.25 in the Sri Lanka series, his glovework was criticised and he was dropped for Tim Ambrose ahead of England’s 2008 tour of New Zealand.
Sources:
- [talkSPORT Following On, July 28, 2026] talkSPORT Cricket, X
- Sachin Tendulkar, “Playing It My Way” (autobiography)
- Muralitharan, “800” biopic trailer launch event
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