Anil Kumble

Team India Player

 DETAILS
Full name - Anil Kumble
Born - October 17, 1970, Bangalore,
Karnataka
Current age - 37 years 101 days
Major teams - India, ACC Asian XI,
Karnataka, Leicestershire,
Northamptonshire, Surrey
Batting style - Right-hand bat
Bowling style - Leg break googly
 PROFILE
No bowler in history has won India more Test matches
than Anil Kumble, and there probably hasn't been a
harder trier either.
Like the great tall wrist spinners Bill O'Reilly and his
own idol BS Chandrasekhar, Kumble trades the leg
spinner's proverbial yo-yo for a spear.
As the ball hacks through the air rather than hanging in
it and comes off the pitch with a kick rather than a
kink.
It is a method that has provided him stunning success,
particularly on Indian soil, where his deliveries burst
like packets of water upon the feeblest hint of a crack.
More than one modern-day batsman has remarked that
there is no more difficult challenge in cricket than
handling Kumble on a wearing surface.
Kumble's prodigious capacity to bear pain was proved in
Antigua in 2002 when he bandaged his fractured jaw to
deliver a stirring spell.
And that to continuously learn when, in the mid-2000s,
after a decade of middling away performances, he
influenced memorable wins in Headingley, Adelaide,
Multan and Kingston, using an improved googly, bigger
sidespin and more variation in flight and on the crease.
In a brilliant though always downplayed career Kumble
has claimed virtually every Indian record. In 1999 in
Delhi he swallowed all ten wickets in an innings against
Pakistan.
In December 2001, on home turf in Bangalore, he
became the India's first spinner to take 300 Test
wickets.
A year later, almost to the day, he became the first to
do so in one-dayers.
In August 2007 at The Oval he went past Glenn
McGrath's 563 wickets to move to No.3 on the all-time
list, behind only Shane Warne and Muttiah
Muralitharan, emphasizing his contribution to spin's
golden era.
And in that same Test he chalked up what, judging by
the pure ecstasy of his reaction and the dressing
room's, was perhaps his most cherished feat of all - a
Test century that had been 17 years and 118 matches
in the coming.
Less than a month after his 37th birthday, though, he
received the ultimate honour when he was named
India's Test captain for the home series against
Pakistan.
THE END