highest number of test wickets by fast bowler
List of bowlers who have taken 300 or more wickets in Test cricket As of August 2015, the retired Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan has the highest aggregate with 800 wickets.[6] He has also taken the most five-wicket hauls in an innings and ten-wicket hauls in a match, 67 and 22 times respectively, and has the fifth best bowling performance in a match, 16 wickets for 220 runs against England in 1998.[7][8][9] Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee is the fastest to accomplish the feat, taking 56 Tests to do so while West Indian Malcolm Marshall has the best bowling average among those to achieve the milestone, taking 376 wickets at an average of 20.94 runs.[10] West Indian Lance Gibbs is the most economical with 1.99 runs per over while South African fast bowler Dale Steyn has the best strike rate of 41.4 balls per wicket.[6] Among those players to have taken 300 wickets, Indian Anil Kumble has the best bowling figures for an innings, 10 wickets for 74 runs against Pakistan in 1999, which is the second best in the history of Test cricket after English player Jim Laker's 10 for 53 against Australia in 1956.[11]
Jim Laker Laker's ten for 53 was the first time a bowler had taken all ten wickets in a test innings. The only other bowler to achieve the feat is India's Anil Kumble, who took ten for 74 at Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla against Pakistan in 1999. Having already taken nine for 37 in the first innings, Laker's match bowling figures of nineteen for 90 remain a world record in first-class cricket. The record for the most wickets taken in a test match was previously held by England's Sydney Barnes who took seventeen for 159 at the Old Wanderers, in Johannesburg, against South Africa in December 1913. Barnes remains the only bowler other than Laker to take seventeen in a test match. Two common factors link Laker and Barnes. They are the only two bowlers who have taken seventeen or more wickets in a test match and they both played for Saltaire in the Bradford League, Barnes from 1915 to 1923, Laker from 1938 to 1940.[59] Laker remains the only bowler to have taken more than seventeen wickets in a first-class match.[60] There had been twenty previous instances of seventeen in a match but, since Laker's feat, only John Davison of Canada in 2004 has taken seventeen wickets in a match.