The announcement has come finally. Indeed it is painful. Anil Kumble decided to hang his boots. After an 18-year long spell of bowling for the country, this gentleman had made his announcement when it was not expected. It is agreed that the time has come for the Big Five of the Indian Cricket to announce their retirement; however, this is not too late as the media cries. All of them still have some cricket left in them.
India always boasted about its strength of spin bowling and the stories of spin quartet is discussed much even today. We had sensational spinners in between however, very few of them lasted for a decent time if not long. The state of Karnataka earlier produced another leg-spinner Chandra whose success was much attributed to the problems in his wrist, a blessing in disguise.
This bespectacled engineer, when made his debut, was literally frowned upon by one and all of the media and cricketing critics. It was true that this lad gained his place in cricketing arena as a medium pace bowler. He is not the conventional spinner, who maintained the arc of the flight, tempted the batsman to come down the crease, or teased the player to play half-volley shots over extra-cover to land in a catch – but Jumbo is different.
Anil is not similar to BS Chandra nor could we compare him with other great leggies of India say, VV Kumar or Hirwani! It is also a fact these two talented spinners could not last long in the cricketing arena.
Every time someone talked about Anil, parallels were drawn comparing him to Shane Warne or Muralitharan. Indeed they were class apart but oldies might still argue that Murali lacked the charm of a Gibbs or Prasanna or Traicos (played for South Africa, East Africa and later Zimbabwe). Jumbo cannot bowl a doosra nor he can turn the ball as Shane Warne or Mushtaq used to do.
Despite all these, Jumbo has played this game for eighteen long years. All these years, he spearheaded the bowling attack. It is a fact that even today, he is our trump card. One cannot forget the evening that after breaking his jaw, he came out, bowled and took wickets too. Even in the last leg of his career, he had his fingers hurt, still he came out and bowled and took wickets.
Common Indian sportsmen do not have this killing instinct in them but Jumbo had it in him. He led by example and his attitude was contagious that inspired Indian attack and a spoiled brat like Bhajji.
Every journey has to come to an end and the Era is ended. Indian cricket will be missing this great fighter of the game and it will take quite some time to fill in this void. Anil maintained that it is the body forced him to declare his retirement.
Jumbo kept on fighting critics since his debut, but this time the aging factor added fuel to the fire generated by the critics. The media could not wait for Kumble’s retirement to see their chocolate boy Dhoni donning the captaincy of India. They targeted all the seniors in the team and they got 2 wickets in the process. The other one is in the line. The wall, Dravid seems to be losing his confidence more than his game attributed to the mindless bashing of the media. Kumble or Dravid, never remained in the good books of the media as Dhoni or Sachin did. I feel that media’s mindless critics aggravated the retirement decision of this great cricketer!
