Congratulations Anil

Congratulations Anil

Anil Kumble has been India’s man for a while now, and he again responded the team's call on the second day at Mohali, cutting of England's tail to restrict them to total 300. As usual, Kumble's length was impeccable especially the one with dead straight main weapon in his armory to get 500 Priceless wickets- he hardly moved away from the good-length area, and importantly, he gave the batsmen no respite by dragging it short.

After becoming second Indian bowler next to the Legend Kapil Dev to play more than 100 Test three months ago, yesterday he becomes the first man in the country to claim 500 Test wickets. Batsman stellar performances which always drew attention of people in our country where we failed to recognize the stunning performance made by this man. We normally use to make unfavourable comparisons with other leading bowlers and also questioning his ability to spin, we know he is not a big turner of ball like Warne or Murali but his Flippers, Top spinners, Googly and his Dead Straight one never failed to create fear on opposition batsmen minds .The truth is he is the second quickest person (501 in 105 test matches) to achieve the feat next to the Srilankan spinning wizard Muralitharan. This could have been happened in Pakistan itself if they hadn’t prepared those killing Flat pitches for the first two tests.

Here is the Comparison with other Bowlers who achieve the same feat

Bowler           Matches      Overs      Wickets      Avg      SR
Muttiah Muralitharan     87     4970     505     22.89     59.0
Anil Kumble          105*     5493.1     501     28.87     65.7
Glenn McGrath          110     4286.4     509     21.01     50.6
Shane Warne          108     5037.1     501     25.51     60.3
Courtney Walsh          129     4835.1     504     24.56     57.5

Congratulations!!! Anil…

-- Raja Shanmugam