Twenty years back on this day, Anil Kumble became the only second bowler in Test history to take all 10 wickets in an innings.
Pakistan needed all of 420 runs to win with almost two days to spare in the second Test against India when Anil Kumble turned things around by picking all the wickets in the innings. Reminiscing the day, cricketer and now the India team coach attributed the “events of 7th February 1999 to destiny”.
Recollecting the accounts of the day, Anil Kumble in an article published in 2008 said:
“Sachin (Tendulkar) did his bit to turn things around. He started handing my cap and sweater to the umpire at the start of an over, in an attempt to ‘bring me luck.’ He wasn’t doing that all the time, but it so happened that whenever he did that, a wicket fell!”
Picking six wickets out of six before the tea break, Kumble said he had only started thinking of bettering his previous best of 7/49.
“Mind you, I wasn't thinking about taking all 10 wickets!”, he added.
Post tea, wicket No 7 came, and it was followed by numbers eight and nine off consecutive balls. It was only then that the entire team got together to confront the possibility of a ‘Perfect 10.’Anil Kumble
Kumble’s teammates then “rallied around him” to help achieve the historic feat at the erstwhile Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium, now renamed as the Arun Jaitley Stadium, that day. Javagal Srinath bowled “wide of the stumps” while Sadagoppan Ramesh was shouted at by his teammates to “not catch the ball” that was coming towards him.
It was flattering, and at the same time, embarrassing. It wouldn’t have been fair had a bowler of Sri’s calibre been forced to bowl another over like that. I made my way to the top of my bowling mark, Sachin providing me with his good-luck routine: I was on a hat-trick at the start of that over, and very nearly got Wasim. We had surrounded him with close-in catchers, but mid-on and mid-off had been pushed back to allow a single. However, I realised a couple of balls into the over that Wasim wasn’t going to take a single, and so we brought them in. The ball that finished the match pitched on the perfect length, took the edge of Wasim’s bat, and Laxman snapped it up at short-leg. What followed is a blur.
At the end of the game, Venkatesh Prasad quietly pocketed the ball, gifting it to the man of the hour only later.
(With inputs from BCCI.)
(This story was first published on 7 February 2017. It has been republished from The Quint’s archives on the occasion of 21-year anniversary of the day Anil Kumble’ picked all 10 wickets in an innings.)
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