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SOARING SPIRITS Kumble, in his cricketing twilight, is burning bright

Kumble has always let his wickets do the talking and it is a huge kitty – 604 Test wickets, 337 ODI wickets. Add to that a Test century at the Oval and you get a player who always gives his best. “As a bowler you should always have that desire to bowl all the time. That’s the way I play my game,” Kumble had told Sportstar a long time ago. And it is that never-say-die spirit that has kept him going ever since his Test debut against England at Manchester in August’ 1990.

It has been a tough ride as the initial days that yielded a flurry of wickets on dust-bowl pitches in India, drew muted praise. Sceptics also did the usual running-down bit by comparing Kumble with the famous spin-quartet of yesteryears – Bishen Singh Bedi, B.S. Chandrasekhar, E.A.S. Prasanna and S. Venkatraghavan. All kinds of excuses were toted up ranging from ‘he is one-dimensional’ to ‘he cannot spin it like Shane Warne’, so that India continued to overlook a cricketing great’s early steps. Some former greats also took time to admire his craft and Kumble was not immune to stray remarks like ‘oh he wouldn’t have found a place in the Indian team when we were playing’.

He took it in his stride and kept bagging wickets by the heap as the then captain Mohammad Azharuddin reposed complete faith in the bespectacled Bangalore engineer. However the Kumble career graph nearly toppled when he had to undergo a shoulder surgery that also coincided with the emergence of Harbhajan Singh as a key spinner who unhinged the Aussies under Steve Waugh in 2001. But Kumble never grudged Harbhajan his success. And in fact even before India defeated Australia in that epochal 2001 Test series, Kumble on crutches, exhorting Harbhajan and company in a pre-series camp at Chennai, was a picture that did the rounds.

The 2003 World Cup in which Kumble was forced to be a bit-player, warming the benches, hurt his ego as a proven performer.

Shortly after that he did briefly mull about giving it all up before the battler in him got going and he hung in to gain a welcome second wind at Adelaide in 2003, following an injury to Harbhajan. The clock had turned, the shoulder had gained strength and Kumble was busy adding to his repertoire as the milestones – 500th wicket and now the 600th wicket – went by. He is India’s greatest match winner, highest wicket-taker and in Tests, he is ranked third behind M. Muralitharan and Warne.

And before the 37-year old could ride into the sunset, a strange quirk of circumstances bestowed him with the honour of leading the Indian side after Rahul Dravid opted out and Sachin Tendulkar refused to lead. “I thought the chance had passed but it has come and it’s given me a shot in the arm,” Kumble said after being appointed as India’s Test captain. He led India to a home Test series triumph over Pakistan and helped the team keep its head when controversies dogged the Sydney Test and though India lost the series 1-2 to Australia, Kumble’s men have retained their pride with a combative performance.

If any other captain had said that line – ‘only one team played with the spirit of the game’ after the Sydney Test, it would have been treated as part of gamesmanship and after a few beers and a few laughs, life would have gone on.

But when Kumble spoke, the Aussies went into denial mode and even tried hard to mend their ways at Perth! Kumble, in his cricketing twilight, is burning bright and a nation so besotted with its batsmen, is belatedly coming around to accepting him as a cricketing great. Thankfully it’s been a story of a ‘nice guy finishing first’.

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