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The Hindu : Anil Kumble was waxing eloquent about the young Indian seamers – Irfan Pathan, R.P. Singh and Ishant Sharma – after the Adelaide Test concluded in a draw. And suddenly commentator Harsha Bhogle queried: “What about the leg-spinner in your team?” There was laughter all around and Kumble with a deadpan expression that finally creased into a smile, said: “Not bad I thought. Considering he is an old man!” More laughter ensued and it was typical of the 37-year-old Indian skipper to keep the lid on his own performance as a leg-spinner, while extolling the promise and potential he found in his pace trio.Huge haulKumble has always let his wickets do the talking and it is a huge kitty – 604 Test wickets, 337 ODI wickets. Add to that a Test century at the Oval and you get a player who always gives his best. “As a bowler you should always have that desire to bowl all the time. That’s the way I play my game,” Kumble had told ‘Sportstar’ a long time ago. And it is that never-say-die spirit that has kept him going ever since his Test debut against England at Manchester in August’ 1990.It has been a tough ride as the initial days that yielded a flurry of wickets on dust-bowl pitches in India, drew muted praise. Sceptics also did the usual running-down bit by comparing Kumble with the famous spin-quartet of yesteryears – Bishen Singh Bedi, B.S. Chandrasekhar, E.A.S. Prasanna and S. Venkatraghavan. All kinds of excuses were toted up ranging from ‘he is one-dimensional’ to ‘he cannot spin it like Shane Warne’, so that India continued to overlook a cricketing great’s early steps. Some former greats also took time to admire his craft and Kumble was not immune to stray remarks like ‘oh he wouldn’t have found a place in the Indian team when we were playing’.He took it in his…More