Cover Story: Anil Kumble: Spin Magic

Becoming the second bowler in 122 years to take 10 wickets in an innings is just reward for a hard-working, compassionate man.

His wife smiles and he sings. Mr Krishnaswami is sitting in his Bangalore home, neatly attired, and warbling to a visitor. Would you believe it, an Elvis Presley song. It's a funny thing too, for somewhere in the middle of It's Now or Never come these lines:
I've spent a lifetime
Waiting for the right time.

Rare Feat: Kumble is on top of the world but his feet are still on the ground

That time is here. Because Mr Krishnaswami's son, you know that guy who they said couldn't spin the damn ball, has taken 10 for 74 against Pakistan at the Ferozshah Kotla to win the second Test for India.

Mr Krishnaswami's son is meanwhile sitting in Delhi and observing India go insane around him. It is the day after the 10 for 74 and the phone is never silent. Bishen Bedi has called. Bobby Simpson sent a fax. Jimmy Amarnath a note. As he descends for breakfast, a gaggle of girls assault him for autographs. He signs, then flees, but it will not cease. Sanjay Manjrekar drops by, "to touch the hand that did the magic". A waiter with a cordless phone approaches tremulously, "Sir, my father would like to wish you." He speaks.

Next day is no different. A young lady, a dentist, worship brimming from each eye, says, "If you ever want a lady chauffeur in Delhi call me." Even in Australia, there is stupefaction. Says Dean Jones: "I spent the day with Ian Botham and we thought it's amazing. Cricket's a lot harder game and the players far better."

So let's say it's appropriate that everyone else is going insane, because amid the chaos Anil Kumble remains, as always, the reluctant deity.

In 122 years and 1,443 Tests only Jim Laker (10 for 53 in 1956) has brushed against perfection. Yet nothing betrays Kumble. His voice refuses to leap with excitement, his walk has no swagger. "I'm shy," he says. "I don't like to be hounded. My cousin called from Canada and said, 'Hey, show some emotion'."

But hey, his heart does sing and for a moment he will let you hear it. After the match he searched for the ball. V.V.S. Laxman, who took the last catch, didn't have it, trainer Andrew Kokinos couldn't find it on the field. His heart sank. Then pal Venky Prasad pulls it out of his bag and says, "I want to keep it."

The girl, a television reporter, doesn't want to be cruel. But she is. "Anil," she asks, "what's it like now to be a superstar?" Now. Now!

LETHAL WEAPONS
Kumble on his favourite deliveries

FLIPPER
Pitches short and hurries. It puts doubt in a batsman's mind, makes him play back. Comes naturally to me because I'm a quicker bowler.
YORKER
Just a change of length. If there are spots on the wicket and a batsman has just got out to a leg-break that has jumped, the new batsman is looking at that spot. That's when I bowl the yorker.
SLOW LEG-BREAK
This is my stock ball. I'm a little slower and I spin the ball more. I bowl all these three deliveries with a similar grip.

After being the only Indian with Kapil Dev to take 200 Test and one-day wickets, after a strike rate better than Bishen Bedi and E.A.S. Prasanna, after eight wickets in a Test match on 11 occasions, after years of an entire nation screaming at their television sets "give the ball to Kumble, dammit" when times got tough and the captain, a believer too, doing exactly that, after that too only now he's a superstar?

It's because he is seen to have the personality of a xerox. A solemn man whose idea of a pep-talk to animated schoolchildren just two days after the 10 wickets is not "go for it, dudes" but "always follow the 3D's -- determination, discipline, determination". He's so square he makes a choir boy look saucy. Thank the Lord, for he brings a delightful old-fashioned gentility to an age that has been warped by excess. He commands reverence. With nine wickets down, Waqar Younis skied a Srinath delivery, yet the fast bowler says, "I expected the fielder to drop the catch."

Much of Kumble's completeness as a man comes because he has let his life soar beyond cricket. Quietly, he befriends disabled children (see box), assists spastic societies, and has supported organ transplants by donating one himself. "Everyone can make a difference," he says simply. "For me, it's an honour." But so utterly skewed is the modern definition of the sporting celebrity that Kumble has just two sponsors, Coke and Hero Motors (lesser men have six). "He's neither a batsman nor is he a unique character," says a sports agent. "He has no real personality, so what would he sell?" How about decency?

Still, the 10 for 74 has helped. Says his business manager Navneet Sharma of the International Management Group: "The phones haven't stopped ringing." One deal has been signed, three more are in the pipeline. Sharma refuses to talk figures, but Kumble's Coke deal is rumoured to be approximately Rs 20 lakh a year, a figure that's bound to rise.

As a pleased Srinath said: "He took just three hours to rewrite an entire career for himself."

It's the eyes. Watch the eyes. They reflect the controlled fury of a cerebral warrior, who says "from first to last ball I bowl every delivery with the same intensity".When he's on the field Kumble is not thinking of helping old ladies across the road. Rahul Dravid concurs. "I stand at short-leg for him and he's so aggressive that if I let a ball go through for a single he gives me a mouthful. But I know it's coming from the heart." It is a purity of purpose that never strays even at practice. Says Kumble: "I'm competitive at the nets because if you're not then you're not thinking." This is a fury that comes meshed with intellect.

GENTLE SPIRIT

Man with the Golden Heart: Terminally ill Velan was happiest in Kumble's company

Tears stream down Vasanth Raghuvir's face when she remembers the son she had -- and lost. Velan, 19, died on May 21, 1998, his body unequal to the battle his mind waged against his corroding muscles, the degenerative muscular dystrophy. But Raghuvir's tears fall not just from her grief; they're her tribute to a little-known love Kumble offered Velan with the same dedication that he brings to his bowling.

Raghuvir does not try to understand the bond Anil Kumble shared with her dying son. "All I know is that he made a tremendous impact on Velan during the last year of his life," says Raghuvir. For, that year Kumble was Velan's life support, visiting him frequently, talking to him or when he couldn't speak, simply being with him. She recalls a day in December 1997 when her son's lungs collapsed, his body stricken with pneumonia. Kumble called that day, bound for Sharjah. "We told him Velan was critical and could not talk to him, but Anil insisted we just put the phone close to Velan's ears and he would talk to Velan," says Raghuvir. "My son was battling for his life and here was a man who until a few months ago was a complete stranger to all of us infusing him with life, with determination to fight back." She recounts Kumble's final visit to her son in his critical state. "It was," says Raghuvir, "probably the happiest and greatest year in the life of my son."

Velan, a first-class 2nd year biochemistry student in Chennai, was wheelchair-bound since he was 10 years old, when his wasting muscles took away the use of his legs. One day in May 1997, Raghuvir got talking to Rahul Dravid whom she met at a shop. She explained how she could not take her son to a cricket match because no stadium in India had a ramp, how it was humiliating for him to be carried. Dravid promised to introduce him to Kumble. On the appointed day, the spinner was there -- 15 minutes early. "He need not have paid so much attention, but he was hovering around Velan, just being by his side." Before leaving he fished out a giant autographed poster for Velan. "I can never express the joy I saw on my son's face at that moment." It was the start of an uncommon relationship. As it blossomed, Velan one day asked Kumble if he would appear in a campaign to build ramps for buildings. There was no hesitation, just an immediate yes. Kumble flew to Chennai and did a seven-hour shoot, all gratis. "The standing ovation he got for his 10 wickets is not enough, he should be given one every time he walks into a room," says Raghuvir. "Just for his golden heart."

--Sarmishta Ramesh

"Education," barked Srinath down the phone, "don't forget to talk about his education." You cannot, for it is inextricably linked to his being and his bowling. As a child, his mother Saroja Swami recollects, first came school, then homework and only then street cricket. As Kumble explains, "I never did adda." When he pursued a degree in mechanical engineering it was not just to hang a certificate on his wall.

Hard work, discipline, a fine mind, are virtues that extend to his craft. It is relevant for when the history of leg-spin is written, Shane Warne can write the chapters on art, Kumble the chapters on science. As he admits, "I am not creative." Ask him that hideous question, that in its very asking belittles him -- "Why don't you spin the ball like Warne?" -- and he forsakes emotion to offer you theory in reply. "The more the ball is in the air (like Warne) the more it will spin. The faster you bowl (like him) and the less it's in the air, the less it will spin."

Loop, flight, air, deceit, all those traditional associations with spin never fit him. He was never a sorcerer, more the workman of line, length, accuracy and speed. And at the nets, he slaved, refining his action, searching not for magic but exactness. That was his art. When he had to bowl wide for two overs to enable Kapil Dev to equal Richard Hadlee's 431 wickets, he grins and calls it "the hardest overs I ever bowled". It is a discipline that has found reward. As Prasanna, flag-bearer of an ancient art, says, "Anil can be clubbed with me and Chandra and the rest. He will be complementary to us and we to him."

But it was never easy, for like a boring old ghost that question of spin would return to haunt him.

Fingers pointed to his lopsided record, 162 wickets in 25 tests at home, only 90 wickets in 26 Tests abroad. He submits he is venomous on helpful tracks but is unwilling to swallow every criticism. "When a fast bowler comes to India he's not expected to take wickets, but if a spinner takes just 8 wickets in 3 Tests abroad it's said he's had a bad tour".

Then came the stiletto through his heart. In 1997, after a poor tour in Sri Lanka he was dropped from the one-day team. "One day I was vice-captain the next day I was watching on TV." And then a strange doubt came calling. "I was thinking maybe people are finding it easier to play me, maybe people are right, I must spin the ball." On the first day of practice he changed his grip, used his wrist and was stunned by the result.

It was amazing, the ball was spinning from outside leg stump to beat off stump and I thought, wow, this is something different."

Except next day it didn't spin so much and the next it did a little and in the end he thought forget spin, forget flight, returned to basics, got 13 wickets against Mumbai in the Irani Trophy and he was back. It was not the best of times, but an intelligent man found the strength to soldier on and the sense to understand his frailties: "I'd like to spin like Shane. But I know my limitations, that I can't spin the ball more."

Maybe now India will not care if he spins or does not. Maybe too India will understand that some men have genius and others heart, and there is equal merit to both men. In a team whose valour is often under question, his has never been. As Mohammed Azharuddin says, "The great thing about him is that he never gives up."

By now the day is winding down and tomorrow he leaves for Bangalore. He has signed, posed, smiled, all day, even when a stranger tells him, "Now you must beat Jim Laker's 10 for 53." Of all the things he says this day, one sentence lingers. "I never think if I've got five wickets I'm on top. I think I've done well but I know the next match I start not from six but from one."

This much is clear. When God decided it was time to choose a bowler for another 10-wicket haul he chose well.