Jumbo & the Prince
I was at the Ferozshah Kotla last Saturday as India tried their mighty best to let Michael Clarke and Australia to escape with a draw in the third test. The crowd, frustrated after the string of dropped catches, was pleading for a quick end to the Aussie innings and the only bowler on the field who seemed capable to them of doing that was Virendra Sehwag. But Anil Kumble was his usual stubborn self and in another display of perseverance kept bowling continuously from one end after tea. Amit Mishra was at the other end and seeing no sign of their beloved Sehwag the chanting for a change started in the stands. But it was a strange kind of chanting. It was more an entreaty, a pleading request to an elder brother to kindly pass the ball to his younger one. ‘Kumble bhai’, went the leader of the chant, ‘please yaar…samajh yaar, Viru ko de yaar please’. In my almost two decades of watching cricket, I have heard people comment in varied hues on different Indian cricketers. Most of them have been lauded on their successes and mercilessly beaten down on their failures. Even the great Sachin Tendulkar, while growing above the game for most Indian fans, has not been spared of accusations of batting selfishly for his hundreds and failing to perform in fourth innings of test matches. One man who has been spared of all accusations and critiques by the general public has been the quiet and hardworking Anil Kumble. Cricket journalists and ex players may have questioned his ability to spin the ball (stupidly in my opinion, when there was already a precedent of a fast and zipping leg spinner taking more than 200 test wickets in Chandrasekhar) but for the average Indian cricket fan on the street Anil Kumble has been a synonym for trust and reliance. Dravid may have lost his form, Ganguly may have been erratic, Sachin may have compromised belligerence for quiet run gathering but Kumble was still the same as he started out – economical, at the batsman and accurate. To understand the importance of Kumble you have to turn the clock back to mid and late 90s. Before Harbhajan burst on the scene and Indian cricket enjoyed a diversity of pace bowling riches, Kumble was both a stock and strike bowler for his captain. After the opposition’s opening batsmen had laid into Srinath and Prasad, both Azhar and Tendulkar would invariably turn to Kumble. On innumerable occasions, Kumble was the man Indian captains looked towards for blunting the impact of the likes of Jayasuriya, Aravinda De Silva, Saeed Anwar, Aamir Sohail and Adam Gilchrist. Coming on within the first 15 overs with field restrictions, Kumble relished the challenge and would immediately plug the flow of runs. While the other Indian bowlers would have economy rates of tending towards or in excess of 5 an over, Jumbo would walk away with a dignified number of 3 an over against his name. In many games his spell was the difference between a total of 280-290 and a chaseable 250 (remember this was mid to late 90s, before the 300 + chase became an achievable rather than an unlikely possibility).If he lived with one albatross around his neck, it was that of not being able to take wickets on foreign shores. He responded in the only way he knew best – through hard work and perseverance of effort. Over the years he shortened his run up, raised his jump to exploit his height for bounce and added a crafty googly and a turning leg spinner to his repertoire. He buried the ‘non-performer at overseas tag’ with two sterling displays – the first in Australia in the winter of 2003 where he was the most successful Indian bowler (24 wickets from 3 tests at 29 runs apiece) and in Pakistan in the historic tour of 2004 (15 wickets from 3 tests at 25 apiece). And yet, despite his limitations, Kumble perhaps like his spinning counterpart Muralitharan remained a solo match winner for India for a long duration. His impeccable record at home underscores his importance again in a period when pace bowling had not yet started winning games for the country. He needed no certificates from the media boxes – there were ample batsmen to vouch for his trouble making abilities. None more so than Stephen Waugh, no less a persevering batsman himself. He credited Kumble with being at the bat all the time with each and every delivery. And every word of that appreciation was true. You only had to watch him bowl that first delivery to Hayden at the Kotla in the second innings to realize that Waugh wasn’t exaggerating. A fizzing leg spinner that was in line with the stumps and almost sneaked through to trap the batsman in front.
I had planned on writing a farewell for Sourav Ganguly at the end of series after he had played his last test innings. Anil Kumble’s retirement now demands a packaged farewell for both. Not that Ganguly’s achievements are any less diminishing in Indian cricket. Statistics will tell you that he has been the most successful Indian captain. India’s results and style of cricket in the 21st century will tell you that he has undisputedly been the best Indian captain. You cannot even give Ganguly the gift of being ‘at the right place at the right time.’ If anything, he took over Indian cricket when it was at its lowest trough, post the match fixing saga. Sourav not only had to deliver results but also restore credibility, and the second task, as any incumbent politician will tell you can be quite a daunting one. Ganguly’s contribution lies not just in bringing a sense of ‘in your face’ confidence in the way India conducted themselves in the field (he staked his personal reputation on this by frequently getting into arguments with opposition captains and match referees) but also in the way he nurtured a talented crop of youngsters who shall take over the torch from his generation. Harbhajan would surely have been a Sikh migrant sitting in the US today had Sourav not insisted on his inclusion in 2001 and Yuvraj, Zaheer and Dhoni all made their debuts under him.
In the midst of all this appreciation of his captaincy, one almost forgets that Sourav was a tremendously talented one day batsmen. He formed the most successful opening pair with Tendulkar and brought the similar aggression to his batting by frequently hitting bowlers over infield to get India going. His test innings of Lord’s and Brisbane are frequently cited but he also dug deep and bailed India out of trouble during the series in South Africa in 2006 and England in the following year. To say that Sourav Ganguly reflected the ‘New India’ is to overstate a cliché, but he definitely changed the way India shaped up towards other teams in the cricketing world. His tenure marked Indian cricket matching its performance on the field with its clout in the money stakes. He took an India languishing near the bottom and left it sniffing the soil of the top. As he retires, Sourav may well thank Dravid and Laxman for that incredible day at the Eden Gardens in 2001 which changed the fortunes of his captaincy. Had India lost that game and the series with it, Sourav whose off field activities liaisons were being reported daily by the media would not have carried on at the helm much longer and Indian cricket would perhaps have not seen the rise which that ‘come from the dead’ victory over Australia propelled.
Shakespeare depicts King Henry V of England exhorting his soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt by stating that whosoever shed his blood in battle would be his brother that day and together their army would constitute a ‘Band of Brothers’. Sourav Ganguly created a merry band of his own, one that effectively changed the standing of his Indian team in the cricketing battlefields that they took to.
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