Murali admits of brief flirtation with 1,000 wickets ambition

"In the end my body told me to stop. I thought to myself, 'Why go on? You have achieved everything there is to achieve in the game and you don't have to prove anything to anyone.' Yes 1,000 Test wickets sounded nice but I knew I could not play at the same level into my forties," said
the 39-year-old off-spinner who took 800 wickets in a Test career spanning 18 years and 133 matches from 1992. Muralitharan made it clear that he will retire from all forms of cricket next year after finishing his Twenty20 stint at English county side Gloucestershire. "No player can go on forever. There always comes a day when you have to say 'enough is enough'. I love cricket and I am still enthusiastic about playing the game but I do not see myself carrying on beyond the next two years. I will be 41 then and that is old enough. "I injured my hamstring diving for a ball in the field in a round-robin game against New Zealand at the World Cup and it took me a long time to recover. When I finish with Gloucestershire in 2012 that will definitely be the end for me," he added.