Even after all these years, there is no real justice for Muttiah Muralitharan. This slight, smiling man from Sri Lanka stands on the brink of reclaiming, probably for good, the Test wicket-taking record he held for five months in 2004. Yet any assessment of his remarkable career is still dominated by the extraordinary but essentially soulless mechanics of how he bowls a cricket ball and the two great arguing points that arise: is it legitimate, and how do you play it?

It shouldn’t be like this. There is so much more to Murali. You don’t get to the top of any sporting tree - and stay there for as long as he has - without possessing a remarkable character, yet the human side is forever obscured by the freakishness and the fuss. What is his personality? What really motivates him? And what are his gifts beyond the ability to spin a cricket ball amazing distances?

A good place to start might be to remember that Murali, now 15 years into his Test career, came close to giving up the game several times. After a wicketless first tour of England as a teen-ager, he contemplated moving to the United States to improve his academic qualifications. He thought of quitting after two umpires no-balled him for throwing on his first tour of Australia. And in 2003 he spoke of an aching body, a weary mind and diminishing ambitions and predicted retirement after the 2007 World Cup. But he bowled on.

Murali, you see, has never been a quitter. It is not difficult to see why. He is a Tamil, and during his lifetime the path of Sri Lanka’s minority community has rarely run smooth. In 1983, when Murali was 11, relations between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamils – tense since 900,000 Tamil labourers emigrated from southern India in the mid-19th century to work on the island’s estates – flared into violence that left hundreds of Tamils dead and 150,000 fleeing back to India. It was the start of a series of wars and a fierce campaign for an independent Tamil region that continues to this day.

Murali’s family stayed put, but when he began to pursue a cricket career seriously, he discovered just how many obstacles lay in his path. In the early 1990s selection for the national team still depended largely on which school or club you belonged to. Most of the right ones lay in the capital. Eventually, at the age of 19, Murali left the hill country for Colombo to improve his chances.

But even when he broke into the Test team, he struggled to integrate. “Although overt racial discrimination in Sri Lankan cricket is rare, it lurks beneath the surface,” one local journalist said.

But from the outset Murali was promising enough to be a pretty regular selection. Sri Lanka had a weak attack, so a spinner who could average almost four wickets a Test, as he did in his first four years, was worth having. Crucially, too, his nonconformist style fitted into the army of belligerents that Arjuna Ranatunga was assembling.

Herein lies clues to the contradictions in Murali’s nature. To many people, he appears personable, shy and modest. Many opponents are charmed by him – even Australians, for heaven’s sake – while teammate Kumar Sangakkara praises him for evoking “a powerful spirit of reconciliation for a polarised nation”.

But then there is the other side – the proud, stubborn competitor who refused to tour Australia in 2004 because of the indignities inflicted on him there nine years earlier, and who exchanges barbs with Shane Warne through the media. The pair struck a truce two years ago, but the prospect of Murali reclaiming the world record has raised the temperature again, with Warne suggesting uncharitably that it is time Muralitharan had his action tested again. Murali fired back at the man whose personal life has just collapsed for a second time: “He must be a miserable man.” So it might be a mistake to be seduced by Murali’s easy-going exterior. He has a steely-edged side and is unafraid to speak his mind or fight his corner. Someone once described him as “publicly quiet and privately outspoken” but sometimes he is willing to be publicly vociferous too.

When Nasser Hussain allegedly called him a cheat and a chucker on the field, Murali didn’t hesitate in bringing it to public attention. When he became involved in the relief effort after the 2004 tsunami, he courted opprobrium by warning of the dangers of corruption and political discrimination in the aid process.

Perhaps the dichotomy is best encapsulated in his batting, which he clearly intends to enjoy, but he has the equally clear aim of irritating the opposition as much as possible.

The great irony of Murali’s story is that all the criticism of his methods has spurred him on more. Had Australian umpires never called him, his career might have been judged estimable rather than extraordinary. Proving himself in county cricket in England, where the hostility was scarcely less severe than in Australia, boosted his confidence further.

The driving forces in his game have been the senses of indignation and injustice. Just as he and his family must have craved acceptance, so he has striven for respect from the global cricket community. Since Ranatunga quit in 2000, Murali has been Sri Lanka’s most uncompromising and influential player, an ice-cool executioner. His desire may also have been revitalised by the trauma of the tsunami, from which he narrowly escaped.

His genius is his Darwinian adaptability. When a coach told him he was too small to bowl fast, the 13-year-old switched to off-spin. Under fire from Aussie officialdom, he turned to leg-spin. When a string of left-hand-ers began to thwart him, he turned the tables by perfecting his doosra. More recently he has added a slider. And he has developed astonishing stamina, averaging 331 balls per Test (Warne, no slouch himself, averaged 281).

By his own admission, the chase for the world record has maintained his passion through the past three years and it will be interesting to see how long he keeps going once he has planted his pole on cricket’s Everest. But he’ll want to put it out of anyone else’s reach. “I have my achievements and fame,” Murali once said. “Money can’t buy how that makes me feel.”

But he is only 35 and has strength to make life difficult for England, who should beware, too, that Murali’s recent poor series in Australia will only heighten his determination. He doesn’t like being second-best.

The thorn in England’s side

Sri Lanka spinner Muttiah Muralitharan is four wickets away from equalling Shane Warne of Australia as the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket. After an unsuccessful time in Australia, where he was unable to overhaul Warne’s mark, Muralitharan will have another chance in the fi rst Test against England in Kandy, starting on Saturday. Only four of England’s front-line batsmen have faced the spinner in Tests and, of those, Kevin Pietersen has done best, averaging 72. Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood have fallen to his magic on five occasions