Former Indian legendary spinner Anil Kumble has revealed his favorite Indian captain. Kumble made his debut in the Indian colors under the leadership of former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin. The leg-spinner scalped three wickets on his Test debut whereas picked one wicket on his One-Day debut. Meanwhile, Kumble revealed that Mohammad Azharuddin was his favorite Indian skipper.
In fact, Kumble played for India for a vast period of 18 years. Thus, he shared the dressing room with some of the greats of Indian cricket. Furthermore, Anil Kumble also played under the leadership of Sourav Ganguly. The Prince of Kolkata also led India with aplomb and Kumble revealed that Ganguly was also one of his favorite skippers.
Meanwhile, it is well known that Kumble hardly used to extract spin from the track. He ended up taking 619 scalps in the red ball version. Thus, he was able to reap fruits for his accuracy. He was always at the batsmen and tried to get a stranglehold on the proceedings.
Therefore, Kumble got most of his dismissals via Leg before wicket and bowled. The flipper was the most potent weapon in his armory.
“All I did was to keep asking questions of the batsmen with each ball.”
“And, no doctored wickets, I only know about ‘engineered’ wickets!,” said Kumble at IIT-Madras Alumni Association’s event ‘Sangam’.
Anil Kumble (Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Anil Kumble was able to become the cynosure of all eyes when he scalped seven wickets against Mumbai in an Irani Trophy fixture. Karnataka was on the backfoot and Kumble was able to get his team back into the contest. However, Karnataka went on to lose that match but Kumble’s figures became the talk of the town.
“If we had to come back into the match we had to get Mumbai all out under 100.
“I went back to my earlier grip and we shot out Mumbai for 90! I picked up seven wickets in the innings. Though we lost by 40 runs, I got the confidence in my style back,” he said.
There is no doubt Anil Kumble was the most hard-working player in the Indian cricket. He didn’t turn the ball a great deal. However, he was able to get his dismissals by bowling a tight line and length.
