Feb 22, 1999

Casting His Own Spell

By Peter Roebuck

Anil Kumble does not look like a cricketer so much as a regretful bank manager. Certainly he does not resemble a respectful member of the notorious wrist-spinning fraternity, a varied bunch belonging on the radical wing of the game whose numbers include gamblers, drinkers and users of the most colourful language known outside parliament. To the contrary he has a diffident air that seems better suited to the rhythms of office than the rigours of the maidan. Also there is a formality about him, a stiffness of movement unusual in a land where legs are routinely put behind ears. He is not a natural.

Accordingly it comes as a surprise to see this same reserved fellow jump and clap as another opponent falls into his lap. Suddenly the rawness can be seen, the roughness of the fighter to whom success means so much and the thinker satisfied as another trap is sprung. Nevertheless Kumble is not a leg-spinner of the traditional sort, tossing the ball into the air, spinning it hard from chubby fingers, luring batsmen to their doom, avoiding dull routine and answering to the beat of a fevered brain. Such fellows have cast a spell over this game, Sonny Ramadhin with his sleeve rolled down to hide his changes, Mushtaq Ahmed with his crafty manoeuvres, Abdul Qadir with his mixture of arms and energy and Shane Warne with his gormless grin and prodigious spin, and all of them magical, all of them mysterious.Our Indian champion is a different sort, a tall man with a run as springy as an antelope's bound and long, boney fingers that wrap around the ball as if it were an enemy's throat and send it down the pitch with such menace that it bites into the turf and spits like a displeased cat. Of course, he is not the first lofty leg-spinner. Bill O'Reilly, the fiery Australian who flung the ball down with imprecations and oaths, and Bhagwat Chandrashekhar, the man with a withered arm regarded by Viv Richards as the best bowler he ever faced, stepped this way before. But they too were different. They were committed to driving the ball past the bat with spin and bounce and rage. Kumble is altogether more considered. He pins the batsman down, probing with every ball and then, suddenly, comes the deadly delivery, a flipper that scoots along the turf or else a toppie flying at the shoulder of the bat. He takes his wickets close by, with catches under the batsman's chin, or else pads thudded and fingers raised, or else clean bowled. In short Kumble is a cross between Chandra and Derek Underwood, the remorseless Englishman whose laser-beam deliveries exposed every flaw in a batsman's makeup. It is not the extremity of his abilities that impresses so much as the use to which they are put to. He is a matador in the guise of a chess player.

Happily for his opponents Kumble has not quite managed to combine the best of these predecessors or else he'd be unplayable. He does not turn the ball quite enough to shake batsmen on a benign pitch. Give him a breaking surface, though, and he is peerless. Now Kumble sits besides Jim Laker in the record books. Of course he needed a bit of luck because he is a remarkable bowler rather than a great one. It was not mere fortune, though, that has kept him going so long or chance that brought so many wickets. It is the work of an intelligent, competitive cricketer who has known some wonderful days and some stinkers and who has survived them all.

Anil Kumble: Spin Magic
My Bet Was Anil by Anshuman Gaekwad

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