It's all about wickets

From Madan, India
The end of an era is near. Warne bid adieu after whitewashing England, Kumble walked off in less triumphant fashion and only Murali soldiers on, moving further adrift of his one-time rival spin exponents with every passing tournament. Warne and Murali's precocious talent was anything but un-noticed and juicy anecdotes of their heroics will be recounted for years to come; here is a small but hopefully significant effort to ensure the third musketeer's legend does not fade away in a hurry. And Murali fans may please forgive me if I made it sound like he has already retired; it is purely unintentional and I look forward to much more from the wonderful Murali-Mendis combine!

Going through the slew of glowing tributes that have been paid to the great man in the last 24 hours or more, one aspect of Kumble-appreciation remains unchanged: harping on his inability to turn the ball big invariably manifests itself, sometimes as criticism, mostly as some kind of dubious strength. It is suggested that his not being able to turn the ball big made him work harder on his accuracy and so on and so forth. All true but that is to miss the point.

Kumble's very style of bowling revolves around NOT turning the ball big; it is not highly relevant whether it was motivated by a relative inability or was by design. I have not played cricket at any serious competitive level but through years of watching the game intently - and also watching the master in action through the years - I have stumbled upon what I think is a good example to demonstrate not only the effectiveness of Kumble's style but also how incredibly difficult it is to emulate it.

Hold the ball seam-up and aim to hit the middle stump off a full length at moderate pace. Two, repeat One. Three, get the ball to bounce a few centimeters closer to the offside than where it pitched previously. Four, now repeat One through to Three with leg-breaks! As hard as turning the ball a long way is, it is even harder to achieve pinpoint precision and near-absolute control over how you want to bowl the ball. This is exactly what Kumble achieved and repeated over 18 years and over long spells, relentlessly building pressure on those at the receiving end.

For, while Kumble knew exactly what he wanted to do, the batsman would have no way of reading his mind. He might be able to pick him off the hand and spot the googly before it was bowled, but how would he be able to foresee extremely subtle variations in line, length and pace? Combine this with fastish pace and the ability to generate disconcerting bounce almost at will, seemingly like a fast bowler bending his back and it is easy to see what a hard time batsmen must have had at the crease when facing Kumble.

This is why, for all the video-analysis that batsmen must surely have done to deconstruct Kumble and for all the fool-proof theories that were thought up time and again to counter Kumble - the most popular being to play him like a medium-pacer - he was as effective and successful as he had always been right up to the India-Australia series played in Australia earlier this year. And that's not all. He combined an indefatigable body with a brilliant cricketing brain and used his lethal accuracy to work batsmen into an inextricable position which would seal their doom before long.

The flipper would trap them plumb when they launched into an extravagant sweep and a startlingly slow, flighted one would catch them groping from too far back inside the crease. To this fan of chess, Kumble's bowling was the closest you could get to a marriage of chess and cricket. Ironically, it was his fast-bowling contemporary and towering legend Glenn McGrath who came closest to emulating Kumble's approach, although in his own inimitable way. This unfortunately feeds the cliche but it is also interesting to note the similarity in the approach of two of the most effective bowlers of their time.

Before I conclude my humble tribute, perhaps the greatest testimonial one can offer to Kumble's achievements is the way the masses, as opposed to the purists, viewed him. The masses did not fail to perceive the 'lack' of spectacular turn in his bowling but on the other hand, they, unlike purists, were obsessed with results rather than aesthetics. Therefore, Kumble's effectiveness was not lost on them, which was largely glossed over by purists until his 24 wicket haul in Australia in 2003-04 forced them to sit up and take notice.

Much like the hope of a Sachin special would be expressed when India faced a daunting target, the hope that Kumble would run through the opposition would be expressed when India had to defend a low total on a crumbling wicket. Long before Kumble's indispensability to the Indian cricket team was recognized by experts as equal to or more than Sachin's, the Indian cricket-loving public had already understood how crucial he was to the team's fortunes though they may not have spelt it out in write-ups with copious words.

Like the man himself has put it so eloquently, it's all about wickets at the end of the day and in the wicket-taking sweepstakes, Kumble towers over all but two bowlers in the history of Test cricket.