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Murali holds the key...and the lock and the door.

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Ed "The Hawk" Hawkins looks at the remarkable impact the "Magician" has on Sri Lanka's fortunes as they prepare to host England

England cricketers and punters alike will be keeping a keen eye on the rehabilitation of Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan over the coming weeks.

Muralitharan, along with his Sri Lanka team-mates, arrive in Australia on Tuesday for the start of a two-Test tour before taking on England in a three-game series back home next month.
The reason for the interest is that Sri Lanka were exposed as being a side which relies heavily on the genius of their wrist spinner in the formbook-burning one-day series loss to England recently, and they will be on the lookout to see if the same happens in the five-day arena.

Of course, Murali, who needs just nine more wickets to go past Shane Warne's record Test haul, could well recover from the nasty bicep injury in time for the first Test in Brisbane on November 8 and be at his devastating best for when Sri Lanka take on England in Kandy 23 days later.

His recovery from the injury, which he picked up playing for Lancashire against Kent in the County Championship in August has been slow.
He only started bowling a couple of weeks ago and has just stepped up his workrate to a couple of overs a day.
So what are the consequences for the two series were Muralitharan to miss out?

Unsurprisingly, you could pretty much write off Sri Lanka's chances against Australia and, wait for it, versus England, too.
Sri Lanka have a horrible record in Test series without Muralitharan. In contests where he has missed one game or more against the established Test countries, Sri Lanka have managed just two victories; against New Zealand in the 1992/93 season and South Africa in Colombo in 2004.

And it is not as if Sri Lanka are holding on for stalemates rather than winning series. They have lost a whopping seven of those 13, including four successive losses between 1999 and 2004.
One of those defeats came against England in 2002. Murali missed just one match - the first at Lord's which ended in a draw - but Sri Lanka still slumped to a 2-0 reverse. Indeed, Sri Lanka - who win only two from five 50-over matches when the great man is missing - suffer on a game-by-game basis, also.

Since Murali began his Test career in 1992, he has missed 18 matches. Incredibly Sri Lanka have won just two of those, lost eight and drawn eight.

Historically England suffer in Asia and their chances of a success would be greatly enhanced if Murali was absent, or not at his best.
England's overall record in the region is poor - just 18 wins from 83 matches and only eight series triumphs from 23 - as their batsmen have struggled to adapt to the slow, low pitches and spinners that tweak the ball square.

More recently, England have fared pretty well in Sri Lanka as a 3/3/3 record shows. It suggests they are definitely coming to terms with the conditions. England, under Michael Vaughan, went down 1-0 in a three-Test series in 2003/04. It was a disappointing result because in the previous series in the country, with Nasser Hussain in charge, England pulled off a remarkable victory having been 1-0 down.

That upset was one of the three series successes which have come since 2000, which means punters should probably forget scorecards and stories of hammerings and 'Delhi bellies' of the past.

Mind you, if a rejuvenated Murali smashes Warne's record and comes at them hard at the Asgiriya Stadium, all of the above may prove irrelevant.

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