Carry on, Anil

Before you point fingers at his strike-rate of 175 in Australia, or make fun of the fingers that impart no turn, before you break into a fit over a wooden-legged misfield, or another bird-brained bolt from the crease, look again at your archives and comprehend what Anil Kumble has done. While we held our breaths, besotted with Tendulkar and Azharuddin, he was busy bowling out teams, sculpting more Test wins than any other Indian before him. Like Duracell, he kept going on, never stopping to complain or shirk. When he touched 300 in his very own Bangalore, how couldn't you feel that lump in your throat?

No spinner of our times has known how to use his home conditions better. Not Shane Warne, not Muttiah Muralitharan, superior bowlers both, but whose records in their own countries fall short of Kumble's 194 wickets in 34 Tests at a touch above 21, and at a strikingly un-spinner-like strike rate of 54.

How must you play him on an Indian surface? Get forward, and he could detonate like a daisy-cutter onto the splice or the glove; play back and he will slide on to you faster than John Travolta on grease. He uses the top-spinner and the googly, but neither of them is his greatest strength. It is, as Steve Waugh pointed out, that he "just keeps coming at you all the time."

He is relentless and uncompromising on the field, thoughtful and articulate off it. You will find him, for example, championing the contract system for Indian cricketers because he has seen - when he was laid off with a shoulder injury for 11 months between last November and this October, how success cannot guarantee financial stability. Or supporting the cause of disabled children, which began because of a touching relationship with a boy in a wheelchair who would write to him whenever he was dropped. He is the consummate senior. Before John Wright arrived with his laptop, Kapil Dev had entrusted Kumble with the task of keeping tabs on his team-mates as well as the opposition, on his computer. During his lay-off, he was busy tutoring Harbhajan Singh at the Bangalore camp.

He is also, it must be added ruefully, the greatest bowler of our generation who is still not an all-time great. Not when statistics tell you that in 32 Tests he's played overseas, India has won only one (in Sri Lanka), and that his average in those matches is 40, the strike-rate, 95. But really, that's looking at the glass as half-full.

For 10 years, he polished the only glittering jewel in India's crown - the home record. Every one of those series wins, bar Australia this year when he wasn't around, relied on Kumble, and he was magnificent even in the lone defeat. He kick-started the golden age, when we won eight consecutive home Tests - against England, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and the West Indies - with 47 wickets at 19. As the years rolled on, South Africa were beaten once, Australia twice, New Zealand twice, England once more. Somewhere between all that came a dreamy 10 in an innings that defeated Pakistan in a Test for the first time in 20 years.

But it's not the champagne moments that tell his worth. Rather, they are the forgettable hours spent toiling in from fine leg, nine to five, trousers drawn high, handing cap to umpire, and grinding out another over... and another... and another... till a captain can ask for no more. It's been a sterling contribution. For that, Anil Kumble, thank you.