Some words are common to almost all of them - dignity, respect, hard-working, gentle, giant, leg-spinner who did not turn the ball, broken jaw, Brian Lara, match-winner, greatest, timely retirement, captain, quiet, unassuming.....
But the word that comes up in all of them, either overtly or covertly, is underrated. If everyone thinks someone is underrated, then is that person really underrated? I don't know. I always thought that opposing teams respected Kumble's presence in the team more than any other Indian bowler's. (There were periods here and there where someone like Harbhajan broke through, but not in a sustained way). How does that make him underrated? Methinks that may have been the case in the early 90's, but not any more. Give the man his due. He was India's greatest and most reliable match-winner. Bar none.
Anyway, as previously promised, here are some of the better written tributes to Kumble. For each one I shall highlight the points in the article that stood out for me. (Click on the author's name to access the article).
1) First and foremost, the person who has probably spent the most time with him on a cricket field - Rahul Dravid. (This is an older, very well-written article, pubished soon after Kumble crossed Kapil Dev's mark of 434 wickets in Tests):
Anil is tough and I like that about him. He is the essential 100-per-cent cricketer, every day, every over, every ball, bringing great energy to the contest, facing every challenge with his jaw sternly set - or even broken for that matter!2) Next up, Sanjay Manjrekar:
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a seminar on management issues connected with cricket; we were about four or five speakers there, and one of them was Kumble. His preparations were so hectic; he was working hard on his speech that he was going to give to the corporates next morning. I could see the same kind of effort and discipline going into his preparations for his speech that he would put into his preparations for a Test.3) A statistical break down of Kumble's career by CricInfo's S. Rajesh and Matthew Verghese:
Where Kumble stands head and shoulders above the other Indian bowlers is in his contribution to team wins. He took 288 wickets in the 43 Tests India won - an average of 6.70 wickets per Test. The average was a remarkable 18.75, at a strike rate of 44.4 deliveries per wicket.4) A sampling of former players and selectors by Nagraj Gollapudi of CrinInfo:
Vijay Bharadwaj , former Karnataka and India team-mate:5) The CricInfo staff puts in another high-quality effort:
It was my first day as Karnataka coach back in the 2006-07 season and we were playing Mumbai at the Wankhede stadium. Both Anil and Rahul [Dravid] were available for the first couple of games. They were pulling my leg saying, "Vijay has already retired, Venky [Venkatesh Prasad] has already retired, and both of them are coaches now but we are still playing." On our return to Bangalore, before our second game, Anil called up to check if it was fine to get a 16-year-old legspinner as a net bowler. I just laughed. I told him he didn't need to call me to get permission. But he knew the coach was important and didn't want to break protocol, so he wanted to check. He could've straightaway taken the decision himself because of his stature. He is a guy who gave importance to each and every detail.
Bowden went up to him, handed him his cap and shook his hand again. Ditto Hayden. Amit Mishra came up to hug him; the baton was perhaps being passed. And then he was swarmed by his team-mates. Rahul Dravid and Zaheer Khan lifted him and after a while it was clear he was not comfortable with all that. Dravid and VVS Laxman tried it again before Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the strongest man in the team, took over the job alone and lifted Kumble on his shoulders. But Kumble was not happy; he wanted to walk on his favourite turf, soak it in one last time.6) Dileep Premachandran calls him one of the two pillars of Indian cricket:
Not a person in the ground could stay seated through the farewell; they could sense a very important part of their lives going away. Kumble would have felt the same but, save a few emotional moments, he handled it with dignity and with equanimity. It was so like Anil Kumble.
As he walked off the square for the final time, Anil Kumble got a pat on the back from the only man who has been playing international cricket even longer than he has. Kumble's first Test, at Old Trafford in August 1990, was Sachin Tendulkar's ninth, and in the decade that followed they would be the twin pillars of a team that sought to establish itself as a big player on the world stage. Over time, they would be joined by other great players, a nucleus that would allow India to challenge Australia on a consistent basis, but the mind-boggling durability of the two main men remained a source of wonder.7) Suresh Menon uses that word in the title:
(...)
After all was said and done and the match called off, he came back out to be chaired around the ground, part of the way on the shoulders of the man who will succeed him as captain. For someone who scaled the greatest heights, it was one of the very few occasions during the 18 years when his feet actually left the ground.
He played 41 Tests fewer than Kapil Dev to go past Kapil's Indian record of 434 wickets; he bowled India to more victories than the entire spin quartet of the 1970s, yet he was condemned to being defined by negatives. The pundits told us he did not spin the ball, that he did not have the classic legspinner's loop, that he did not bowl slowly enough to get the ball to bite. Kumble was described by what he did not do rather than by what he did.8) Snippets from the press conference where he made his formal announcement:
"Thank you all for all the support I have received right through my career. I've built some great friendships and met some fantastic people along the way. You'll probably start calling me from tomorrow for quotes about somebody else. Give me a break for a couple of days and I'll certainly take all your calls." Like he has unfailingly answered the Indian team's calls for the last 18 years.9) The scene in the Indian dressing room was how we'd imagine it to be, knowing what we have been told about the man:
In between, there was time for some humour as well. A player turned to Mahendra Singh Dhoni and quipped: “You have two empty seats now” (the Nagpur Test will be Sourav Ganguly’s last). But for those who are familiar with Dhoni’s style, the gist of his instantaneous reply did not come as a surprise: “Nobody can replace those two”.10) Ian Chappell thinks the timing of the decision was right:
The defining moment for me and it encapsulated the career of Anil Kumble was his last wicket in Tests. He had been angered by the young legspinner, misjudging a catch in the outfield and the very next ball he took off after a skied catch off his own bowling, charged back even with his bad hand, took the catch and turned around and fired the ball back at the stumps as if to say to the young man, who will take over his role as a legspinner in the Indian team, that is the sort of the effort that you've got to put in every day if you want to be at the top of the game.11) Rob Smyth of the Guardian talks about some of the high notes of Kumble's career:
Rarely has there been a sportsman who has combined flintiness and dignity so adeptly. He was hard, really hard, but utterly fair. Kumble forever walked the line, but rarely if ever crossed it. This was a fiercely proud man.12) Peter Roebuck chips in from Australia:
He never gave up, and with unyielding will and high intelligence, made the most of his abilities. He scored a Test hundred and never let his side down. A thousand pities the Australians did not speak to him in Sydney. Throughout he has retained his dignity, it has been an immense contribution, and he did not outstay his welcome by a single day. Even in his retirement he served the side and Indian cricket.13) Prem Panicker says goodbye:
And so he went. Not at the end of the series, or the end of the year, but now, when the arguments for his going were only as strong as, not stronger than, those for his continuing—and that, perhaps more than anything he has done on the field in course of an extraordinarily distinguished 19-year career, sums up all there is to know about Kumble the human being.14) G. Rajaraman pays tribute to the Smiling Assasin:
The more long-lived of Indian cricketers have invariably been players of extraordinary skills. They have had one other thing in common: they have all, without exception, undersold themselves; their accomplishments have been less than their promise.
Anil alone has been the converse: man who consistently rose above the sum of his own parts; almost, you could call him the Glenn McGrath of spin bowlers.
A couple of years ago he joined world billiards champion Geet Sethi, former Test cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar and Olympian sprinter Ashwini Nachappa in conducting a management workshop for corporates. And I had the opportunity of watching him prepare his presentation on resilience. He spoke at length about developing the ability to bounce back – citing examples from his own career – but more than his oration, the quality of his preparation left me stunned and gave me an insight into how seriously he took any task.15) Kadambari Murali has some inside stuff on the man:
Eight months ago, sitting under a lovely afternoon sun outside Kreeda, his elegant Bangalore bungalow, Anil Kumble casually said he didn’t think he would last out the year, career wise. “I’m hoping to make it to the Australian series this October,” he added, equally casually, “but it depends on my body”.16) From the archives, an article by Anand Vasu, written soon after Kumble had crossed the 600 wicket mark in Tests:
(...)
That Bangalore day, he grinned as wife Chethana disapprovingly commented, “He needs to think about himself”. “She’s being a wife,” he quipped, smiling at the woman he dubbed his “support system” and “partner in everything”. And then the smile became more wry. “What do I do?” he asked. “I’m exhausted. The last tour was very tough, mentally and physically and though I desperately want to play, I have to see how much I can take. I’ll know when it’s time to say goodbye.”
Anil will not like this piece on him, though it is meant to be a tribute. He does not let his personal life become public and he would probably have preferred that what happened to him in England stayed private. He will be irritated that this mentions the time in 2004 when the Supreme Court of India granted sole custody of a child from an earlier marriage to the woman who is his wife, and was carrying his child at the time. “The Supreme Court cannot trace any deception in Kumble,” screamed the headlines. Justices Shivraj V. Patil and DM Adhikari never faced Kumble’s bowling, clearly.17) To round it off, Harsha Bhogle uses almost all the words I mentioned above, and more:
The announcement itself was typical of the man: no grandstanding, no ostentation, no farewell tour. Anything else would have jarred, it wouldn’t have been Kumble. One of the greatest team-men the game has known did his job and said good-bye. In his last Test match, he had eleven stitches and was under general anesthesia for half a day. When the numbness vanished, when the body was over-ruled once more, he returned to take three more wickets.
No comments:
Post a Comment