Anil Kumble can tap dance. Bet you didn't know that. Bet you thought he was a boring Southie who read engineering manuals for fun and went to bed at nine. Apart from doing that other thing he does-take wickets. So many wickets that a new pedestal is being built alongside, would you believe it, Kapil Dev. To bowl the one ball that would nail down his place in history, Kumble, 34, has travelled to Bangladesh. Tap dancing was only a momentary diversion.

As a precious record beckons, Kumble is not about to abandon his bowling boots for dancing shoes. He had diligently attended tap dance rehearsals for a commercial and, all panache, pulled off the moves. "I'm a professional," he smiles. "Something interesting came up, it was within the purview of good taste..." There he goes again, talking about stuff Indian cricket struggles to understand: professionalism, good taste.

Actually, India has struggled to fathom him from the time he turned up with nerdy glasses and a whisper of a voice, the lung power no doubt saved for hundreds of appeals. Apart from Sachin Tendulkar, he is world cricket's senior-most player, a greybeard of calm temper but fiery temperament. Spinner Murali Kartik calls Kumble "the giant redwood of Indian cricket". It is an appropriate image: one of timelessness, strength, growth. Of a stature that nothing ordinary or low can reach.

But that is the big picture, long term. In real-time, cricket is a lot more prosaic and pitiless. Twelve months ago, far from being considered a pillar of Indian cricket, Kumble was thought of as a slowly crumbling monument. His selection for the Australian tour was termed timidity, he was being told his time was up. Harbhajan Singh pulled out of the series due to injury, the team turned to its veteran. That window of opportunity let in a second wind.

THE TWO TITANS   Stacking up the number of India's two most   successful bowlers inj its Test history

KAPIL DEV            and     ANIL KUMBLE 131 Tests 90 434 Wkts 434 29.65 Avg 28.17 9-83 Best 10-74 23 5 w/i 28 2 10 w/m 6 63.9 Strk Rt 66.07 2.78 Econ 2.56 24 Test Wins 28 90 W/W* 199 *Wickets in Test wins Statistics till December 2, 2004

Fifteen seasons in international cricket, and astonishingly, this is Kumble's best year ever; he has taken 64 wickets, (@26.47, strike rate 52.17). When the year began, he was 30 short of 400, only the second Indian to get that far. Before 2004 is out he could be galloping towards 500, the first Indian to the mark. "Five hundred would be lasting," says commentator Harsha Bhogle. If and when he gets there, he will be welcomed into a rare club (there are only four others ahead of him in Test history) because there is genuine regard for Kumble the world over.

Indian cricket, though, will have to make a leap of the mind and the heart to show the Bangalore man its appreciation. Comparing Kapil, the medium pacer, and Kumble, the leg spinner, is like arguing about apples and oranges. But it must be done simply because all these years we have been sold the idea that one fruit is inferior to the other. The numbers show it is not (see box). Former teammate Javagal Srinath, as he is wont to, puts it bluntly, "The big guns have been extra critical of Anil, always kept him under the microscope." At most times, Kumble keeps the lid on his pique but this is not most times. "People have not understood what I do. After15 years, they still want me to do what they have in their mind."

Here then, is "Anil Kumble for Dummies": If the great spinners played off a classical sheet, Kumble is a jazz man. His forte is pace, bounce and accuracy. Not toe-crushing pace (though he has bowled yorkers) but variations that create the illusion. Bounce that unsettles batsmen and puts doubts in their mind about playing back (you are so dead if it rushes and you miss) or playing forward (oops, that rushed, leapt at the splice and lobbed to someone shrieking at bat-pad, you are dead anyway). The ball on a spring, not a string. No doosras or teesras here. Only the labour of a thoughtful, tenacious man. That and 434 Test wickets. Class dismissed.

PICTURE SPEAK

PERFECT TEN: Kumble cleans out Pakistan at the Kotla

Kumble is not about to be. He gives credit for his unreal year to the fact that he had never stopped studying his craft, that the batsmen scored runs which took away Tests to Day Four, bringing spin into the frame. "Usually, overseas on Day Four, I'd be batting to take the match into the fifth," he cracks, grey memories now gone.

Much has changed since his debut: rules, tactics, manners. Other than losing a moustache and smartening up the eyewear, Kumble the teamman has changed little. He still does not think causes are lost, still hates losing and still does not want to stop bowling.

His bowling, though, has changed subtly; the redwood has kept growing. His body has aged, his shoulder gone under a knife, but his mind is stronger and more flexible. A one-off, he has evolved alone; talking, gathering information and working at nets. In Australia last year, he tried a new grip for his googly and mentioned to Shane Warne that it was easy to pick. "They may pick it," Warne replied, "but they still have to play it." It is Kumble's art in a nutshell: they can pick it, deconstruct it but out in the middle they still have to play it. He set an off-spinner's field and bowled his googly, chuckling at this little in-joke. "In any case people say I'm an inswing bowler, so they think I'm bowling off spin." Three Tests in Australia produced 24 wickets.

For the first time in his long and twisted career, the curse of being the spinner who can't turn it has lifted in the public mind. Fortunately he was not holding his breath and can see the funny side. He says, "I still have the urge to get one ball like Shane Warne bowled to Mike Gatting," adding more seriously, "It's like a reminder that I should be trying things." The current work in progress, something he has been trying for years, is the flipper, the eventual aim being to bowl it at will. He tried it on a slow, low wicket in Kanpur against South Africa. Some fell on line, once the keeper's dive could not save four byes. "I don't have the control yet, wouldn't try it in a tight situation ever ... there you've got to go back to your set pattern."

KUMBLE'S TOP 5

10/74 vs Pakistan, Ferozeshah Kotla, Delhi, 1999 7-48 & 6-133 vs Australia, Chepauk, Chennai, 2004 8-141 & 4-138 vs Australia, Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney, 2004 6-53 vs South Africa, The Wanderers, Johannesburg, 1996 6-64 vs England, Chennai, 1993

The pattern includes sitting in his hotel room the day before the game, going through the batsmen he could be bowling to the next day and the most likely way of getting them out. "You hope that you will get them the first ball you bowl, of course," he says. Facing Kumble, said South Africa batsman Jacques Kallis, was like tackling someone who did not let you "free your arms or free your mind". By controlling the pace in his repertoire (see box), he can control the batsmen's minds, scatter seeds of confusion, plant doubts. It is what all spinners do. Old master B.S. Chandrasekhar thought he saw rare quality as he watched Kumble hurry batsmen in a junior net and says all he has ever told him was to lengthen his run-up, "the rest he has done on his own". The two men still talk. Chandra says Kumble is a contemporary exponent of a subtle art who plays in an era which is physically more demanding.

PICTURE SPEAK

TEAM MAN: Kumble acknowledges getting his 400th Test wicket

Now that his records loom over the generations, Kumble's spirit will be discovered anew and saluted. But to those who have shared a dressing room with him, his ability to rise above, to be bigger than his own experiences is a lesson. In 1992, Kapil repeatedly introduced the 22-year-old as "our sixth fast bowler" in South Africa. It may have been a joke, Srinath accepts, "but I think Anil suffered it in silence". When it was his turn to room with a rookie, Kumble told debutant Kartik to do exactly what he did before every match. His words to a teenaged Harbhajan as they played club cricket in Chennai have not been forgotten, "Keep working, you will play for India." Looking around a frisky change room, Kumble says, "When I first came in, I didn't think I could look at some of the seniors and talk the way the younger guys do now. It's not disrespect, just confidence. It's great to see."

Modern spinner, forward thinker, Kumble remains an old-fashioned man at heart, puzzled by what Indian cricket represents. "People don't come to see skill, they don't think of cricket as a sport where you can't win all the time." On Planet Cricket, he has two endorsements to Irfan Pathan's five. It does not make sense but Anil Kumble, bowler of his time, record-holder today, competitor forever, never makes a fuss. It is time though that India began to make a fuss about him.

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