Of Kumble’s toil and Bhajji’s guile

It may be one of commentators’ favourite clichés, but cricket definitely is a great leveler!!

Take Kumble for instance. ‘King’ at the Eden and a ‘Pauper’ at home! For someone who almost single-handedly carried India to victory on the final day of the second Test at Kolkata, the first two days of the third Test at Bangalore must’ve surely been a hard toil without any manner of luck or reward.

The way Kumble went about proceedings today, it seemed as though the weight of the entire stadium was on his shoulders. His face had an almost permanent scowl as he bowled over after over at batsmen who seemed to have ’sorted him out’ in the three intervening days between the last Test and this one.

On the other hand, his spin-bowling partner, Harbhajan Singh showed no signs of the pressure (of being reported for suspect action) and concentrated hard on bowling regulation off-spin with great guile and persistence. And Bhajji’s nagging line and length, and his deceptive flight won him the day as he scalped 6 good wickets, bringing him on the edge of a personal landmark (He’s currently one wicket away from completing 200 Test wickets).

Kumble’s fault today was that he seemed to expect a wicket almost as a right after his 7-wicket haul at Kolkata. So he tried to do too much too soon on a pitch that held precious little for him. As a result, he was all over the place most of the time. This prompted Ganguly to ask Kumble to bowl a restrictive line outside the leg-stump, something that he obviously hates to do.

Maybe Kumble should’ve taken a leaf out of Bhajji’s book and relied on patience. But then, he’s a great bowler and will know that the pitch will start turning in a day or two. So he’ll be waiting for the Pakistani second innings to weave his magic once again!

But for that to happen, the Indian batsmen should first ensure that Pakistanis have to bat again! And from the way Sehwag and Gambhir have started, I can’t see any reason why Kumble won’t get a chance to redeem himself with the ball in this Test once again!