Muttiah Muralitharan is kneeling alongside a smart wooden table in the front room of his home in the well-appointed Pelawatta suburb of Colombo.

His right arm, which made him the greatest wicket-taker in all Test cricket – as well as the most controversial – lies on the table, palm up, in its normal resting position.

The flesh between shoulder and elbow is tight to the wood. But between elbow and wrist a funny thing happens: his forearm is suspended mid-air, pointing heavenwards at an angle – Muralitharan claims – of 27 degrees.

Muttiah Muralitharan shows off his physical quirk to Sportsmail's Lawrence Booth at his home in Colombo

Muralitharan's 'quirky' action has caused countless problems for batsmen over the years

Murali on… … whether his Test-wickets record will ever be broken It’s very difficult to say. Nobody thought I would take 800, nobody thought Courtney Walsh would take 500, or Shane Warne would take 700. There could be a genius bowler who comes along and takes ten wickets a match and plays for a long time. … Kevin Pietersen He is one of the most talented cricketers in the world. I think he has under-achieved. His average should be more than 50. My personal view is that he became dragged into other issues and his cricket dropped a little. When he first started, he was smashing everything. He couldn’t cope with the fame. Maybe that’s the issue – if he had Sachin Tendulkar’s mind, doing his job, not getting into team issues, he would have been better. … Alastair Cook I think England need to have attacking openers. Without attacking openers, you’re not going to win. They can’t drop Cook because he is the captain. … the World Cup My four teams are Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and India. Dark horses are South Africa. England have to build a team, go forward, win at least the series here in Sri Lanka, then reach the finals of tri-series in Australia. Then they will have a chance. Until then it’s very difficult to say. … Jos Buttler He can be a brilliant player. He’s a good person as well. But he bats too low at 6 or 7. Advertisement

I’m pushing down on his hand, but there’s very little give: this bent arm, a condition he inherited from his grandfather, is not for straightening.

Say hello to the most notorious kink in the history of cricket.

Muralitharan is trying to explain why he was never a chucker, why his physical quirks have been misunderstood, and why, despite all this, he thinks the ICC are right to have embarked on a global clampdown on dodgy actions.

For the five English journalists present, it is a spellbinding discourse lasting over an hour and delivered with the same wide-eyed passion that earned him 800 wickets in 133 Tests at an average of 22, absurdly low for a spinner. (Even Shane Warne’s 708 wickets cost 25 apiece.)

Now aged 42, Murali appears to have reached some kind of accommodation with the naysayers who accused him of javelin-throwing his way into the record books. But the fire is not extinguished – not yet.

Asked about the scrutiny his action attracted, he says with his customary smile: ‘It was always there. I got used to it. I always believed that to every action there is a reaction. Everyone won’t support you. There will be 50 per cent supporting you and 50 per cent against.

‘If there are people saying things against you, there is no point upsetting yourself. I can’t prove to 100 or 75 per cent of the people. It is impossible.’

Yet here he is, making his most persuasive case yet, a good six months after playing his last game of competitive cricket – an IPL match for Kolkata Knight Riders in Bangalore.

Back in November 2004, in a seminal ruling in cricket’s history, the ICC decreed that a delivery became illegal once the flex in a bowler’s arm at the point of release reached 15 degrees – the level at which, they argued, a chuck became visible to the naked eye.

Previously, the threshold had been lower: spinners were allowed five degrees of flex, medium-pacers 7.5, and fast bowlers 10.

But tests revealed an uncomfortable truth: all bowlers straightened their elbow joint to some degree, and some did it more than others. And so the ICC instituted the figure of 15 across the board.

Former Sri Lanka spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, showing off his physical quirk, says he was never a ‘chucker’

Sri Lanka spinner Muralitharan took a record 800 Test wickets - he is pictured bowling in a Test match with New Zealand at Wellington in 2006

Many felt the rubric was rewritten for one man, and one man only. By now, Muralitharan was 532 Test wickets into his career. To admit he was a chucker, said the critics, would have been to undermine years of Test cricket. They said it was the only reason Murali’s action was deemed legal.

But Murali is adamant those critics were wrong. Tests showed that when he bowled, the flex in his arm was 10.5 degrees – from a 38-degree bend as his arm goes above shoulder height in the delivery swing, to a point-of-release measurement of around 27.

This, as he tried to prove by resting his arm on the table, is the level beyond which his arm cannot straighten. According to Murali’s logic, his action is perfectly legal.

Had he flexed at the point of delivery from 38 degrees to, say, 22, he would not have a leg to stand on. ‘People don’t understand this,’ he says. ‘Even past cricketers don’t understand.’

Complicating the issue was Murali’s double-jointedness. Already in possession of a wrist that has been compared to everything from a piece of rubber to a helicopter, he says his naturally bent arm allowed the wrist more flexibility than a straight arm would. (Try it for yourself.)

His shoulder, too, is double-jointed. The effect of it all is a whirl of joints and limbs and – for many – illegality.

Muralitharan is carried off after playing his last match on home soil for Sri Lanka

Murali admits he could not have been the bowler he was – in effect a wrist-spinning off-spinner – had he not been born with a bent arm.

But he argues the impression of illegality is an optical illusion, one which persuaded the Australian umpire Darrell Hair to no-ball him for chucking seven times in three overs during the 1995 Boxing Day Test at Melbourne.

Three years later during a one-day game against England at Adelaide, Murali was called again, this time by Ross Emerson. Murali claims Emerson’s move was premeditated. He says he bowled leg-breaks that day to prove his point (and leg-breaks, say the experts, can’t be chucked).

Almost two decades on from a very public humiliation, Murali is philosophical about Hair and Emerson: ‘Every man makes mistakes. Two people’s opinion can’t be the judge of a career.’

What, then, of the doosra, the secret weapon of the modern-day off-spinner, the one which goes the other way? Many, including Graeme Swann, believe it cannot be delivered legally. Murali disagrees – and stands up to illustrate his point in slow motion.

First, he mimics the action used for his standard off-break; then his doosra. He does something different with the wrist, for sure – but the elbow remains unchanged. It is not conclusive. But it is persuasive.

Muralitharan and the Sri Lanka team receive a guard of honour from schoolchildren at Galle in 2010

For a while, Murali wasn’t allowed to bowl his doosra. Following tests at the University of Western Australia in 2006, that turned out to be legal too.

Not that this silenced those who had made their minds up. ‘Let people shout whatever they want!’ says Murali. ‘It’s up to them. I never wore long sleeves. Never. Unless it was cold conditions, I bowled with short sleeves. I am clear. If you are throwing, you will know. Your elbow moves so much, you will know.’

Murali’s mini-masterclass is timely. Earlier this year, the ICC’s cricket committee were alarmed at the number of questionable bowling actions on view at the World Twenty in Bangladesh. And almost all the transgressors were off-spinners.

One by one, they were reported, and told to go away and mend their actions – most notably Sri Lanka’s Sachithra Senanayake, reported during the tour of England in June, and Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal, the world’s leading spinner.

Some have likened the purge to a witch-hunt, but Murali supports the move. Uniqueness is good, he says, but it has to be within the rules.

Murali is carried shoulder-high from the field after reaching the 800-wicket mark during his last Test match

‘I’m in favour of the system because it’s the only way to prove a bowler is chucking or not,’ he says. ‘But I can feel sympathy for them because they should have been tested before, not now.’

In fact, Murali would go further. The clampdown, he says, should not affect spin bowlers alone.

‘I want the ICC to test everyone, test hundreds of bowlers and then come up with a system with the right number of degrees. Then it will be fair to everyone.

“It’s difficult to say if 15 is the right number of degrees until they do the proper research. But they have to verify how much the fast bowlers are bowling the bouncer – some are bowling it at 17 degrees. That means you are giving someone an unfair advantage.’

Murali knows he bowled within the laws of the game but still wants the ICC to tests everyone's action

There are still many good judges who will regard that last remark as a little rich. They will contend that his bent elbow gave him an advantage that went beyond the acceptable.

Murali, however, bowled within the laws of the game. He knows he did. The debate may continue, but Murali has found an inner peace. It may be his greatest achievement of all.