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Balanced Sports and World Cricket Watch are inviting cricket writers from around the globe to wax lyrical on who they consider their “favourite cricketer”. Today, Rishabh Bablani of The Cricket Nerd describes one member of the “600 Club”, Anil Kumble.

The lasting image of Indian cricket in the 1990s is that of a young Sachin rising to prominence, fulfilling the prophecies that had marked him as a demi-god early on.

However, only a few months after the Test debut of India’s greatest batsman, another young man began his Test career; a man who was India’s steadiest, most consistent bowler in the 90s; the man who would eventually become India’s highest wicket-taker.

If you’re thinking of Venkatapathy Raju or Atul Wassan, stop. I’m speaking of Anil Kumble, one-third of the 600-wicket club – alongside fellow leggie Shane Warne and fellow Beethoven-lover (I cannot confirm that) Muttiah Muralitharan.

My own fascination with Anil Kumble can’t really be attributed to any one thing in particular. Entering my teen years was like waking up from the Matrix; I was suddenly aware of cricket and decided I liked it. India had been beaten in the World Cup final a few months earlier, and now they were playing the champions in their backyard. I didn’t know many of the players, so I was free to make my own judgments without being influenced by reputation.

I saw Kumble running in to bowl over after over, seemingly every day, with the bouncy run-up and the skillful release from high above his wiry frame. I got to see plenty of him in my first full Test series, because he bowled in excess of 40 overs in four out of the six Australian innings, for a total of 24 wickets, the mastermind behind India’s closest attempt yet at winning a series in Australia. His 8-141 in Sydney is one of my favorites, and is unfortunately hard to come by.

It was easy for me to relate to him. Like him, I started playing cricket attempting to be a fast bowler (I never got past slow-medium full-tosses), before becoming a legspinner. And like him, I was a colossal nerd. And I don’t mean he looked like a nerd just because he once wore glasses three sizes bigger than Daniel Vettori – he was the real deal, as you can see in this picture below.

His relatable geekiness is the result of being a keen student – he succeeded in becoming a mechanical engineer before he played Test cricket. As didn’t turn the ball a great deal, he presumably puts his finely-tuned mind to the task, seeing every batsman as a Physics quiz, asking question after question until he found the answer. He found the smallest chink in a batsman’s technique and worked on it until he took the wicket. Aiding him was his arsenal of deliveries – the stock leg-break, the wrong ‘un and probably several different kinds of flippers.

His strongest attribute, though, is considered to be his never-say-die attitude towards bowling – which helped him and his team when they most needed it. If the first half of his career ended perfectly with his classic 10-74 against Pakistan in 1999, the second half began with injury and the rise of another spinner, Harbhajan Singh. With his position under threat for the first time in his career, Kumble bowled despite the pain of a broken jaw in the West Indies in 2002, and then developed his bowling to much greater effectiveness – the noughties yielded 355 Test wickets, a vast improvement on the 264 wickets in the previous nine years.

The numerous prolific years since 2002 led to him eventually leading India in 2007, two months after his entertaining maiden Test century against England. It was a short transitive phase, with the captaincy expected to pass to MS Dhoni at the end. Nevertheless, Kumble led well, and India won a home series against Pakistan for the first time in 27 years and his diplomacy was vital during the controversy-filled tour to Australia.

Age and injuries set in again in 2008, unfortunately, and by then he was well past his best (though he would come back strongly in the IPL). He retired mid-series in the home Tests against Australia (who I notice have been mentioned quite a few times in this piece).

I knew the retirement was coming and had even secretly hoped for it when he was going wicketless. I couldn’t bear to see this shadow of who had been such a great bowler. When it came, I wept anyway. Not openly, of course, but with the minds’ eyes of my mind’s eyes.

He ended his career at the right time, when the Indian candle was burning bright, when they were on the road to the World number One ranking, when it was right for young players to be given their trials for the future. With Anil Kumble gone, India cannot be sure of winning even on a turning track because they have no one as good to exploit it. It’s clear that he wants to be a part of the behind-the-scene improvement in Indian cricket, but if the board cannot do whatever it needs to to retain his services, they do not deserve success.

I leave you with one of the best things I’ve ever watched, a profile of him from 1995, when he was with Northamptonshire.

Exit strategy: He bowled approximately 55,000 deliveries in international cricket, around 6000 more than Sachin has faced.

Rishabh can be found on Twitter @cricketnerdist

Previous Favourite Cricketers

Brian Lara by David Siddall

Allan Border by Ben Roberts

Douglas Jardine by David Green

Curtly Ambrose by Matthew Wood

Sachin Tendulkar by Subash Jayaraman

Ian Botham by Jonathan Kilroy

Shane Warne by Murray Middleton

Rahul Dravid by Sujith Krishnan

Wasim Akram by Blaise Murphet

Glenn McGrath by Gary Naylor

Ed Giddins by Nick Harrison

Adam Gilchrist by Will Atkins

Angus Fraser by James Marsh

Paul Allott by Jonathan Howcroft

Tim Bresnan by Yorkshire Len

Sourav Ganguly by Christopher David

David Boon by Jimi Stephens

Herschelle Gibbs by Justin Lawrence

Bob Woolmer by Nigel Henderson

Darren Lehmann by Daniel Gray

Kumar Sangakkara by Nishant Joshi

Justin Langer by Sarah C Robinson

Andy Bichel by Nicko Hancock

Chris Tavare by Gideon Haigh

Gavin Larsen by Ken Miller

Ray Bright by Dan Lonergan

Chris Pringle by Michael Wagener

Listen to the Cricket Podcast that Plays by Backyard Rules

Audio, 6th February 2012: 39 minutes

DAVID SIDDALL, JONATHAN HOWCROFT and MURRAY MIDDLETON discuss a big week in cricket, ambidextrous sports stars, and the peculiarities of the IPL auction. Plus we dish out those increasingly infamous weekly awards.

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Special Thanks to this week’s podcast hero of the week – CRAIG TILLMAN

Tell us why you deserve to be next week’s hero by….

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BEN ROBERTS gives a very frank review on Miller’s Luck by Roland Perry.

I entered into this book with trepidation. For a long time I have been searching for a Keith Miller biography that was not this effort by Roland Perry, with no luck. One of the great cricket writers David Frith was scathing in his review of Perry’s work, citing multiple factual errors that grated on him. Similar critiques have been provided by Gideon Haigh and even by ourselves. I scoured second hand book stores, and found all that filled their shelves were multiple copies of Miller’s Luckby Roland Perry.

Deflated that my searching had come to nothing, I swallowed my pride, took my desire to find out more about Miller to the local library and lifted a copy shelf. As I found out as I read it a previous borrower had too become so frustrated with errors (though their frustrations were World War II facts) that they had taken to the book with a pen themselves!

Without even re-hashing the factual inaccuracies of the work, simply put this biography is deplorably written. Rather than a study of a complex and polarising character, Perry serves up 500 pages of hero worshipping that completely turns you off as you read. Miller was a tremendous all-round cricketing talent and a war veteran who escaped death multiple times (often due his own insubordination). However he also was a heavy drinker, addicted gambler and constant philanderer that makes the overriding rhetoric of hero worship difficult to justify.

As a cricketing talent he could easily be worshipped; a war veteran, definitely respected. Limited to discussion primarily on these two topics such a subjective take on the man could well be accepted. But the reality was that for all the success Miller had on field it clearly came at a very heavy cost to his family which is an indictment on the man, an impression that Perry has not sufficiently captured and in fact missed completely.

Because of the books length and quantity of information provided (despite factual errors) the dedicated and discerning reader has the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about Miller and his life. Absolutely, the descriptions of Miller’s love affair with Lords and the tremendous innings he played there during the post war years make me long to travel back in time, but in all the book fails on a number of fronts. Zero stars.

Ben contributes regularly to the following two Blogs:

Balanced Sports – The thinking fans sport opinion and analysis site.

Books with Balls – Reviewing the literature of a number of genres but definitely no Danielle Steele.

Latest World Cricket Stories

• My Favourite Cricketer…. Anil Kumble
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 62
• Book Review: Miller’s Luck, by Roland Perry
• The Pacific Pull Shot Episode 4
• Relationships in Cricket are Funny Things
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 61
• Nathan Lyon Signals a Post-Warne Era for Australian Cricket
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 60
• My Favourite Cricketer…. Chris Pringle
• What Would Hell Be Like for a Pakistani Cricket Fan?

ADAM CASSIDY, ICC East Asia Pacific Regional Project Officer, is developing and raising the profile of cricket in the Asia Pacific region. He’s documenting his work in the form of a video diary called the “Pacific Pull Shot”.

In this episode we take a look at the performances of the East Asia-Pacific players in Melbourne on scholarships with Sub-District Clubs.

We head to Geelong for the Australian Country Cricket Championships.

Tom Evans from the ICC conducts some surprise house inspections on the Vanuatu, PNG and Japanese scholarship players to make sure they are behaving.

And our feature interview is with the Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs. The Hon. Richard Marles MP.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Latest World Cricket Stories

• My Favourite Cricketer…. Anil Kumble
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 62
• Book Review: Miller’s Luck, by Roland Perry
• The Pacific Pull Shot Episode 4
• Relationships in Cricket are Funny Things
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 61
• Nathan Lyon Signals a Post-Warne Era for Australian Cricket
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 60
• My Favourite Cricketer…. Chris Pringle
• What Would Hell Be Like for a Pakistani Cricket Fan?

lead image (c) news.com.au

BEN ROBERTS talks about how integral relationships are to cricket.

I may be going to sound like Oprah or Doctor Phil, but there is clearly a deep emotional need for success in all cricketers. They cannot subsist on footwork and line and length alone, and the absence of beneficial outside relationships is quite possibly catastrophic.

Take for example the beginning of the Australian summer and the very public spat between always-fiery teammates Simon Katich and Michael Clarke. Their descent into the relationship abyss came at the lowest point of the entire Australian cricket family for years, and no one would have then believed Clarke would be the captain to lead Australia to such a rapid turn in fortunes.

But things did turn around and success has come to Clarke’s Australia; along the way, Clarke has related well to all comers, in particular Clarke and Ricky Ponting have in January 2012 picked up their very productive affair, missing since they last truly connected two years prior.

Not only that, but this summer the new Australian selection panel (a long-established matchmaking institution) have been rather bolshie in taking plenty o’ gambles. In Melbourne they sent absolute opposites Ed Cowan and Dave Warner on a blind date (after Warner’s early summer fling with Phillip Hughes clearly was a very one sided relationship) and the two openers have not looked back. Cowan in fact has spent most of the summer gazing at Warner lest he be struck by a missile from his blade!

All this is not to mention the bond that has occurred within the Skippy fast bowlers. Although Peter, Ben, Ryan, James and Mitchell know that they all cannot be included in the same team all of the time, they clearly feel and care for each other the way they have shared the Indian scalps around.

This relational need in cricket has seemingly gotten the attention of more than just the cricketing authorities. This article link was passed over to me recently. The tongue-in-cheek piece may require both a working knowledge of cricket and the Book of Genesis to fully appreciate the humour, however we can add it as evidence that maybe even a divine relationship is key for cricketing success.

The author Michael Jensen lists many of faith who have graced cricketing fields. Two stuck out on my mind for the era in which they played: England’s Reverend David Sheppard was an ordained minister during his international playing days and later Bishop of Liverpool. Australia’s Brian Booth was an Anglican lay-preacher. Although previously aware of their non-cricketing backgrounds, when presented with them again reading this article, my first reaction was to exclaim to myself (and Zoe the dog) about the wilder types whom they shared dressing rooms.

Respectively, Sheppard and Booth teamed with Fred Trueman and Keith Miller, whom would hardly be described as shrinking violets. I wondered just how it went? Was there precedent for the Clarke/Katich troubles? Of course my first reference point is the modern day font of wisdom Wikipedia. Looking up both Booth and Sheppard, lo and behold both have their relationships with Trueman and Miller described, including that they were full of humour.

Now I am not proposing if looking for a life partner you give up the blind dates, internet chat rooms and bar crawling and head down to your local cricket club. Such a move may not go as well in practice as in theory, but on those days when it is 42 degrees, you’re in the field defending 47, and the opposition is 0/278, look across to your mate at first slip/mid wicket/cover and realise that you may be sharing more than just the old thigh pad in the team kit!

Ben contributes regularly to the following two Blogs:

Balanced Sports – The thinking fans sport opinion and analysis site.

Books with Balls – Reviewing the literature of a number of genres but definitely no Danielle Steele.

Latest World Cricket Stories

• My Favourite Cricketer…. Anil Kumble
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 62
• Book Review: Miller’s Luck, by Roland Perry
• The Pacific Pull Shot Episode 4
• Relationships in Cricket are Funny Things
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 61
• Nathan Lyon Signals a Post-Warne Era for Australian Cricket
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 60
• My Favourite Cricketer…. Chris Pringle
• What Would Hell Be Like for a Pakistani Cricket Fan?

Listen to the Cricket Podcast that Plays by Backyard Rules

Audio, 30th January 2012: 31 minutes

NICKO HANCOCK, DAVID SIDDALL and MURRAY MIDDLETON discuss a big week in cricket including India being rubbish once more, the Sydney Sixers winning the Big Bash League and England being tied in knots by Pakistan . SHOAIB NAVEED joins us on the line to delight in explaining what Pakistan’s series victory means to Team Misbah.

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Don’t miss a single episode of the One Hand One Bounce Podcast. Automatically get each new episode by subscribing via iTunes or subscribing to the RSS feed.

Become the Podcast Hero of the Week

Special Thanks to this week’s podcast hero of the week – HARDUS STEENKAMP

Tell us why you deserve to be next week’s hero by….

1. Emailing the team at worldcricketwatch@gmail(dot)com

2. Tweeting @worldcricketw

3. Leaving an illuminating comment on worldcricketwatch.com

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Gareth Hughes explains how Nathan Lyon snugly fits into the post-Warne era for Australian cricket.

There are two avenues bowlers can utilise to build pressure in test match cricket.  The first is to beat the outside edge, strike the pad, coax the batsmen into playing shots they normally wouldn’t, creating chances, and making the striker’s end an unsettling, unnerving, and uncomfortable place to be.

The other method is to apply what is commonly referred to as scoreboard pressure.  By choking and restraining the batsmen by simply putting the ball in places from which they cannot score runs.  The pressure gradually mounts until the batsman is forced by way of an itching to score runs to attempt to score from areas in which they are not comfortable.  Australia’s humble curator turned spinner, Nathan Lyon is a bowler who prides himself upon the latter.

This summer we have seen the Australian bowling attack revert to its roots of a fierce pace attack instilling fear in batsmen and a spinner who complements them by tying down an end.  Since the glory days of Warne and McGrath Australian bowling coaches, selectors, and players have been caught up in the wake of their retirement and only now is Australian cricket beginning to stop mourning their loss and move on.

It has taken the best part of five years for Australia’s fast bowlers to stop trying to emulate McGrath’s back of a length delivery which brought him so much success.  It has taken the same amount of time for Australian to stop searching for the next Shane Warne, a spinner who can rip through a batting line up on any wicket.

The fact is, Warne and McGrath were sublime bowlers who did phenomenal things that are almost impossible to replicate.

It is rare for Australian pitches to be conducive of spin and for spin bowling to be used an attacking weapon like fast bowling is.  That is not to say spin does not play a role in cricket in Australia.  In fact, with maybe the exception of matches in Perth, spin bowling is one of the most tactical facets of the game.  Michael Clarke should be given a lot of credit for recognising this and using Nathan Lyon in ways few other captains use their spinner.

It has not been uncommon to see Nathan Lyon being thrown the ball with a few minutes left in a session to hurry through an over to allow a dangerous Hilfenhaus, Siddle, or Pattinson a final fiery over at a batsman with the mindset of surviving until the break.  Furthermore, Lyon’s ability to land the ball in good spots is always improving and he is quickly becoming one of the hardest spinners to score off around the world.

He also knows how to bowl in Australian conditions, utilising the extra bounce.  However, he showed on debut in Galle that on a spin friendly wicket he can take a bag of wickets and not just be an assistant to the quicks.

The other great thing about Lyon is how his tenacity and passion that shows through in his batting as well.  In his relatively short career we have already witnessed his fighting spirit in the second innings batting debacle of Cape Town, top scoring with 14 in an innings of 47, and then his gallant effort in the second innings at Hobart, only to be left devastated after hearing his wicket skittled.

Latest World Cricket Stories

• My Favourite Cricketer…. Anil Kumble
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 62
• Book Review: Miller’s Luck, by Roland Perry
• The Pacific Pull Shot Episode 4
• Relationships in Cricket are Funny Things
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 61
• Nathan Lyon Signals a Post-Warne Era for Australian Cricket
• One Hand One Bounce Weekly Cricket Podcast 60
• My Favourite Cricketer…. Chris Pringle
• What Would Hell Be Like for a Pakistani Cricket Fan?

Listen to the Cricket Podcast that Plays by Backyard Rules

Audio, 24th January 2012: 31 minutes

BLAISE MURPHET, JONATHAN HOWCROFT and PUNTER STEVE discuss Sri Lanka’s comeback in South Africa and Australia’s continued dominance over India. DAVID GREEN joins the team on the line to give the reverse sweep on Pakistan’s thrashing of England.  There are the coveted weekly awards, plus all the latest news and happenings in world cricket.

NB: Please allow a moment while it buffers/loads

Don’t miss a single episode of the One Hand One Bounce Podcast. Automatically get each new episode by subscribing via iTunes or subscribing to the RSS feed.

Become the Podcast Hero of the Week

Special Thanks to this week’s podcast hero of the week – ASSAD HASANAIN of  AssadHas.

Tell us why you deserve to be next week’s hero by….

1. Emailing the team at worldcricketwatch@gmail(dot)com

2. Tweeting @worldcricketw

3. Leaving an illuminating comment on worldcricketwatch.com