KUMBLE: 600 AND STILL COUNTING

Yousuf Sale may be just a footnote in the history of first-class cricket. But a few horizontal movements of this first-class umpire's hand in 1988 changed the face of Indian cricket. Sale had noballed a schoolboy bowling medium pace for chucking. The schoolboy switched to legspin. Circa 2008, Anil Kumble is 600 wickets old.

I read about Kumble first in 1989 as an under-19 player who slammed a century against his Pakistani counterparts. He seemed a batsman who could bowl a bit. Somebody who could be a useful bits-and-pieces player in the one-day game. A year later he made a tentative test debut against England. The accurate leg-spinner who did not spin the ball was out after a few onedayers. The unassuming youngster wearing glasses I thought would end up a fringe player.

Cut to 1992. Maninder Singh was having a good domestic season and seemed a strong contender for the South Africa series. It all boiled down to the Delhi vs Rest of India Irani Trophy match. Maninder was thrashed for 218 runs, emerging with three wickets as Rest of India amassed 638. RoI followed it up by reducing Delhi to oblivion - winning by an innings and 122 runs. The chief architect - Anil Kumble with a rich haul of 13 wickets. There was no turning back after that.

Four tests in South Africa produced 18 wickets. And back in India, Kumble became the spearhead in the Azharuddin-Wadekar formula of victory after victory on slow designer pitches.

Dubbed as a seamer masquerading as a spinner, Kumble's relentless accuracy and bounce fetched him a bagful of wickets, and with time there was more spin too. In ODIs the accuracy meant it was difficult to get runs off him.

It was a different story outside the country though. Kumble had inspired India to a test victory over Sri Lanka in the early 1990s (India's only win abroad in the entire decade). But Kumble lacked bite when it came to tests in Australia, West Indies, England, New Zealand and South Africa through the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Even at home in the early 2000s, Kumble was no longer indispensable. In 2001, Harbhajan Singh was in the forefront, with a mind-boggling 32 wickets in three tests against Steve Waugh's Aussies, while an injured Kumble missed the entire series. Kumble did return and remained a certainty in the test side but an ODI spot was slipping out of his grasp. The highest ODI wicket-taker for India (he still is) missed out on the final XI for most of the 2003 World Cup matches.

Later that year, Harbhajan was preferred over Kumble in the Brisbane Test against Australia. The World Cup and now this, Kumble was becoming increasingly peripheral in then skipper Sourav Ganguly's scheme of things. But soon after Brisbane, it was an injured Harbhajan's turn to return the favour (of 2001 when Kumble's injury had given Harbhajan a place and 32 wickets against Australia). Kumble grabbed the chance with both hands, churning out 24 wickets off three tests. Nobody could label him a paper tiger abroad anymore

The much-hyped test series in Pakistan was next, a country where India had never ever won a single test, forget winning a series. Kumble was in his elements, striking at regular intervals as India pulled off a historic 2-1 triumph. By now, he was employing guile as much as his time-tested tool of accuracy.

Kumble did get to captain in an ODI against England in 2001-02 (with both Ganguly and Dravid missing) . But that seemed just a matter of trivia, for an unsung hero who was far away from the ad-mad world. Conventional wisdom (in India at least) had it that only a batsman made it to captaincy (the last bowler being Kapil Dev who was removed in 1987).

The BCCI does deserve some credit for not getting swayed by the Twenty20 heroics of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and opting for the veteran soldier Kumble, after Rahul Dravid stepped down.

There's been method in Kumble's leadership, just like his bowling. And the air of dignified articulation made the world sit up and listen, when he announced after the Sydney Test that only one team played fair. The same words from Sourav Ganguly would have sounded very different.

Guts Kumble has in plenty. No words can describe him dismissing Brian Lara, bowling with a bandaged face in 2002.

And he can think out-of-the-box too. December 2007 against Pakistan at hometown Bangalore , Kumble lit up the final day of the test with a surprise return to his bowling roots. Unleashing medium pace to extract full capital out of the unveven bounce, Kumble's five-wicket haul nearly propelled India to victory. Wonder what one of the spectators thought of this foray into medium pace. A certain Yousuf Sale.