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The Rediff Encounter/Anil Kumble

The sheik of tweak

Anil Kumble is a determined man.

Determined to take wickets? Not really -- the tall leg spinner is in a rush to seek fulfillment of his batting talent. Wickets, he guesses, will come along anyway, it is the runs he now feels he needs to make.

On the first day of the Harare Test, Kumble went in as nightwatchman at Nayan Mongia's fall -- volunteering for the job, because he wanted to be in the middle. Only minutes before, he had captured his 200th Test wicket (to add to the 200 ODI wickets he had completed during the preceeding ODI series).

Come to think of it, the landmark wicket was rather uncharacteristic -- a stumping by Mongia, where most of Kumble's wickets have come either by way of leg before, close-in catches or the batsmen getting bowled. Not much given to flight, Kumble doesn't exactly thrive on luring the batsman out and getting the stumper into the action.

When he went out to bat, so determined was he that his senior batting partner, Navjot Singh Sidhu, let him handle almost all the bowling by himself. And when he went out, on day two, to resume his innings, Kumble hogged most of the strike, spurned protection offers from his mate, and hit audacious boundaries between slips and over point's head as he reached 29.

He was dismissed at that score, dragging a ball on to his stumps -- a delivery which had four written all over it.

At this point, Kumble is just over a hundred runs from scoring 1,000 runs in Test cricket. He had looked extremely good when he showed his batting talent against the young Pakistanis in 1989 and, even at the international level, a couple of his innings have been critical to the team's fortunes.

Yet, somehow or other, he has never come close to being known as an all-rounder, rightly so because he has not produced runs consistently.

Now he wants to catch up on the lost batting years. He is still young, and looking to play a few more years - "See my fingers, there are no callouses," - and is no longer as tense about his bowling success as he was before.

He has crossed the 200 line, and knows he has earned his place in the bowling pantheon. Ever a team man, Kumble realises the Indian tailenders have not been contributing significantly to the team's total. As it is, an allrounder is missing from the team. That usually forces the team management to go in a Test with five bowlers. If the lower half can't produce enough runs, the team has a handicap.

Javagal Srinath could have developed into a real good batsman, but he never aspired to and Kumble was busy taking wickets all these years. Now he reckons he can catch up on his batting demons.

Meanwhile, his bowling is inviting comments all over again. He has now gone back to his basics, which means less experimenting and more judicious use of his flippers, googlies and bouncing deliveries, accuracy being the governing motto. "Accuracy is most important to me," says Kumble. It is a point which Ajay Jadeja endorses. "When Kumble was out of the team, it was because in those Tests, unfortunately, his accuracy was missing. He has usually pinned down batsmen and then forced errors out of them."

With batsmen pinned on the backfoot, the close-in fielders come into play. Any delivery that skids or bounces ricochets of bat-pad into waiting hands.

Says Nayan Mongia: "It is said I have been keeping well for the last two years. I admit it too, but it is because I have grown more comfortable behind the stumps now. I have kept to Anil (Kumble), always a difficult proposition especially on sub-continental tracks, all these years but now I know his style completely. It makes me more confident. I know what action of his will produce which delivery. When it comes, I am ready. Hence my success ratio has increased."

Like other opposition batsmen, the ones from Zimbabwe too testify to the difficulties that Kumble poses. "He comes off the wicket so fast - some of his deliveries really fizz," said one. Alistair Campbell reckons one still has to take chances against Kumble. "If he restricts you and thus sets you up in his trap, you are going to fall sooner than later. Thus, it is important one rotates strike and does not permit him to work his magic on one particular batsman."

It is in this respect that critics suggest left-handers are critical to negating Kumble. It all started with Jimmy Adams, who caused Kumble's first unsuccessful series in 1994. Jimmy "Padams" - so called because he used his pads so often in the series - frustrated Kumble no end. The idea was picked up by other batsmen. And not only were the left-handers proving to be a success against him, but also the theory of playing him on the front foot all the time nullified his strength completely for a certain stretch of his career.

Not any longer, though. Says Mongia, "I think it is a myth that he is not a successful bowler against the left-handers. I have seen him trouble the best of left-handers, be it from Australia or even Sri Lanka."

Kumble dismisses his failure in 1997 as lack of good form. "Batsmen lose form, so do bowlers," says the smiling spin king.

People