He's done it again for one last time. Mutthiah Muralitharan has produced a turn that confuses everyone. Eight wickets short of 800, Murali has announced he will retire from Tests after the first Test against India in Galle. Not the series, just the Test.

It is baffling timing, but then causing bafflement is his stock in trade and not just when sending down those whirlies. (Never mind the elbow, who hasn't wondered inside that wrist? Most probably some ball bearings instead of bones.)

The wrist does so much that when Allan Border played Murali for the first time he thought the Sri Lankan was just an unorthodox leg spinner. On the 2001 tour of Lanka, young Indian batsmen would point to the polished granite floors of the team hotel and say, "he can turn it on this."

Watching Murali bowl was a demonstration of the art of aerodynamic subterfuge, a biomechanics lesson and a drama class. By the time he was 29, the back, groin and knees had protested loudly. Sri Lanka's former physio Alex Kontouris (now with Australia) once revealed that Murali's action had led to a stress fracture of his ribs, an overuse injury common among elite rowers.

During his career Murali found the balance between being competitive and social, polite and tough: he could face questions about his action and produce a repertoire that had text books being rewritten. He somehow let deeds of furious umpires and words of Bishen Singh Bedi (who has never really made up his mind over whether Murali was a javelin thrower or shot-putter), just slide over. And he kept doing what he was meant to do on a cricket field - taking wickets.

Ending his Test career after two matches post-Galle would have rounded everything off perfectly for Murali. Not merely 800 wickets but still holding off the Indians once more. Other than Australia and South Africa, Sri Lanka is the only other country where India have not won an away series since 2000.

Murali had much to do with that so perhaps the Indians, bedraggled bowling unit and all, will cling onto his departure as an omen.

India and Murali have always been linked, distant and respectful cousins. An ethnic Tamil, he is now married to a girl from Chennai and has got on with the cricketers from across the ditch, particularly friendly with his slow bowling bretheren Kumble and Harbhajan.

Much is always said about how Murali has never quite dominated two teams: India and Australia. That notion has an asterisk - *only on their home ground.

On his own, he has always been Sri Lanka's most lethal strike bowler (485wickets @19.49, 44 fifers). In these parts, it is a quality that is simply taken for granted. Only when some cracks appear on the ramparts after their departure is its real merit understood and then lamented over.

Against the Aussies, in 13 Tests Murali has 47 wickets @26.02 at home, 12 away @75.41. Against India in 21, it's 57 wickets @ 24.84 at home, 40 in India @ 45.45. That case, believes former Test batsman Sanjay Manjrekar, has to do with the greater purchase available on Lankan wickets as opposed to the sleepers in India. In Murali's earlier days, says Manjrekar, Indian batsmen didn't plunge onto their front foot like the rest of the world. Manjrekar said, "I just tried to pick the runs off the backfoot and didn't try to drive". Navjot Sidhu said he always confronted Murali by leaving his crease at the bowler's ‘point of no return' - the instant the ball left his hand - to try to change his length.

Between then, the mid-1990s and now, came the doosra, variations of pace and the experienced bowlers' ability to sniff out an opponent's anxiety. One of the most generous compliments to Murali came from Virender Sehwag who rates the Lankan and Glenn McGrath as the toughest bowlers he had encountered.

McGrath, Sehwag found, couldn't be struck for fours at will (others supposedly can be) and Murali he confessed, had a doosra he couldn't read. As Sehwag carved up a 201 not out in the 2008 Galle Test, commentators marveled at the Indian opener's adept strategy of batting against Murali's spin. Sehwag explained that he had only been winging it, "I wasn't able to pick his doosra so treated every ball as if that's what it was. And I tried to hit it." Just the thought would make Murali giggle.

As his Test career reaches its end, whatever umpires or an earlier generation said about him, Murali will know that his competitors appreciated and acknowledged him. Steve Waugh had said that batting against the Lankan was like "being part of a David Copperfield show with reality and illusion intertwined".

There's going to be one final performance of that show in about eight days time. We should all watch because magicians of intelligence and endurance, skill and generosity don't come often.