Chandra - 8.2, Kumble - 4.2

They have been described as legspinners for want of a better term. BS Chandrasekhar and Anil Kumble invented their own versions of the art: not for them the slow bewitchment, the loop and the flight. They ran in straight and fast, used as much shoulder as wrist, and hurried their victims to doom. Between them they helped fashion 31 of India's 67 Test wins - figures which make them two of the country's biggest match-winners ever.

Ball held close to his face like a ten-pin bowler, Chandra would start his run-up with a couple of ponderous strides. The pre-delivery leap was followed by a swift cartwheel of an arm that seemed to contort just that much more because it was withered. His top-spinner would fairly zip off the track; and he had a genuine bouncer that kept the batsman firmly pegged on to the back foot.

Though he bowled the occasional googly and legbreak, Chandra was best known for the devastating pace and bounce he generated with his high action and rapid arm-rotation. There was a disconcerting unpredictability about his bowling and it often seemed that even he had little clue about what kind of delivery was coming next. Which is why he could be magnificent one moment, munificent the next.

Relatively more straightforward, Kumble makes up for his lack of turn and variation with nagging accuracy and unflagging stamina. He wears down the patience and resolve of batsmen with relentless line-and-length bowling and makes the pitch do his bidding. The flipper which slides into the right-hander at some pace has been his weapon of choice: a high percentage of his lbw wickets have come off it.

Like Kapil Dev before him, Kumble has been both workhorse and spearhead for a team that has traditionally been short of bowling resources. On first-day pitches he is impossible to get away; on wearing fourth-day tracks, he is unplayable. Kumble was the lynchpin of India's magnificent run between 1992-93 and 1999-2000, when they won 16 matches at home and one in Sri Lanka. He is also a vital member of the one-day side.

Career records place Chandra and Kumble on an even keel but the true measure of sporting greatness lies beyond the realm of cold statistics. In this case though, even the statistics are pretty revealing: Kumble has won more matches for India overall while Chandra won more matches in different conditions.

There was little to choose between Chandra's performances abroad (strike rate of 67.70) and those at home (64.60). He won Tests all over the world - 6 for 38 at The Oval in 1971 which helped India win the series against England; 6 for 94 in 1975-76 against New Zealand at Auckland; 6 for 120 against the West Indies at Port of Spain in 1975-76 and 6 for 52 in each innings of the 1977-78 Test at Melbourne.

In sharp contrast, Kumble has been reduced to pedestrian levels when he isn't playing on Indian dustbowls. His strike rate at home is better than Chandra's at 54.90, but abroad it is an embarrassing 94.80. On true and even-bounced pitches, batsmen have tended to play him more like an inswing bowler, easily working him away for singles and twos.

In his 63 Tests, Kumble has accounted for 281 of the 502 wickets that fell to spinners; hardly a surprise considering the supporting cast: Venkatapathy Raju (93 wickets in 28 Tests), Rajesh Chauhan (47 in 21) and Sunil Joshi (41 in 15). By contrast, Chandra had to fight for his spoils with the titans of his era, wresting a massive 39.80 per cent share of all the wickets that were taken by spinners during his time. Not bad considering he was bowling with Bishan Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan.

Chandra bowled to more quality batsmen ­- Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Tom Graveney, Colin Cowdrey, Ken Barrington, Geoff Boycott, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Zaheer Abbas - than Kumble has. Also, his successes came against formidable teams; in 1971, England were coming off a three-year unbeaten run while the West Indies of the `70s were one of the greatest teams ever.

The clincher comes from Syed Kirmani who has kept wickets to both: "There is no comparison. Chandra had greater variety, turned his deliveries a lot more and his faster one was as fast as the fastest bowlers in the world. I remember Viv Richards saying, after getting a snorter of a first ball that flew past his nose in the first Test of the 1975-76 series, `That was as fast as Thommo, maan!' Keeping to Chandra, especially down the leg, was my greatest challenge as a keeper." "On a scale of ten," he said, "I would give Chandra 8 and Kumble 3."

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How they rate 'em

Syed Kirmani: Chandra - 8, Kumble - 3.
Eknath Solkar: Chandra - 9, Kumble - 4.
Dilip Vengsarkar: Chandra - 8, Kumble - 5.
Ajit Wadekar: Chandra - 8.5, Kumble - 9.
Rajan Bala: Chandra - 7.5, Kumble - 5.5.