Oh captain, my captain!

It could have ended no other way! As the champion motored in from the top of his bowling run with that trademark hop, skip and jump for one final time in international cricket, and thus relieve himself of all the burdens that he has had to face over the last year, Mathew Hayden backed out because of disturbances in front of the sightscreen. It was a false start! And now he had to go through that whole process again to attain that "bliss in solitude" which every individual encounters once during his/her lifetime.  And he got hit for a boundary!

Nothing could have epitomised Kumble' s career better than those final moments at the Kotla.Here was a cricketer who had gone  through 18 years of toil but had never had time to sit back and savour his achievements (of which there were innumerable).  He had to start all over and prove himself again at evry point of time in his career. Anil Kumble knew nothe word joy because he wasn't ordained as  a cricketer and the joy of playing sport comes only to amateurs and those professionals who are supremely gifted. Anil Kumble was neither. After all, he was a misfit, wasn't he? An engineer by education; a bespectacled young man whose looks would have done an academic proud; a leg-spinner who delivered the ball from the vertical and one who spun his spun his googly more and the most inelegant of batsmen to watch. For him, every morning was a question of sustainabilty, reinventing himself so as not to get found out and proving all and sundry wrong over and over again. He couldn't have afforded to let his guard drop for that would have meant that batsmen would have devoured him up in that moment of complacency. He  courted immortality all through the latter half of his career but they always proved to be false dawns for every period of exultation in his career was accompanied by disappointment just like that Matty Hayden boundary

Amidst the legion of greats, Anil Kumble was the greatest match-winner.  Sachin Tendulkar had some fine batsmen in the middle order but recall an Indian bowler of class and conviction barring Javagal Srinath over the last 15 years.  He turned India into a cricketing fortress and made it a formidable test match unit for the first time in its history. Mohammed Azharuddin will still tell you how much more important Kumble was when compared to Sachin from India's perspective. But one again suspects that the word match-winner will never sit well on Kumble's shoulders. He was neither flamboyant nor charismatic as all match-winners are.

It is very rare for a successful sportsperson to be adored all over the world as a great gentleman as well. Anil Kumble was just that. No cricketer has made a comment that has created as many flutters as when Anil Kumble said,"There was only one team playing in the proper spirit of the game" after the Sydney test. That spoke as much about the man's aggression as about the respect that he commands. It was a comment that ruffles Adam Gilchrist and Roy Symonds to this day. That he was the only stakeholder to come out unscathed also speaks much for the integrity and values that he has upheld and cherished throughout his career.

He makes for a great role model for lesser mortals as Rahul Dravid will gladly confess. He put into practice the maxim that anything could be attained through sheer hard-work, determination and perseverance. We might all try to emulate a Sachin Tendulkar but we must not lose sight of the fact that Sachin was supremely talented when he started off and that such a gem comes through only once in a generation. Kumble represents the common individual, one who has to give his all for any bit of success or recognition and one who has to improve all the time in order to progress.

Sport won't see a greater competitor than Anil Kumble. I haven't revelled in any Indian victory as much as I have seeing Anil Kumble bowl with a fractured jaw and plastered skull but still toiling with great skill against two of the greatest exponents of batsmanship in modern times: Carl Hooper and Brian Lara. Jumbo might have grimaced more with every over as it became excruciatingly painful and his plaster might have kept coming off, but not for once did he waver. It made for poignant viewing  because even the Indian players on the field had been stunned to silence. I can also not imagine any cricketer who would have come out to bowl after having been administered 10 stitches in a game that was destined for a tame end. I somehow suspect that events like these will be etched in my mind more than a Tendulkar hundred or a Yuvraj blitzkrieg.  

All the wickets that he picked up will be crucial in building up Kumble, the spin-legend for the sake of posterity. Just for pure effort and commitment, he deserves a place in the exalted company of Warne and Murali. The sheer weight of wickets will ensure just that. After all, we measure the greatness of past players by sheer numbers, don't we? Contemporaries won't grant Kumble similar leeway because for all his wickets, he was a limited operator. Maybe, he had to retire to derive that joy out of his achievements. 

It could have ended no other way! If ever there was a snapshot of a career, this was it. It was surreally ironic! He scored valuable runs in a manner only Anil Kumble can; he got injured off the bowling of his heir apparent trying to pull off an impossible chance; he came back to compete with  a single hand but was unable to bowl out Australia for there was not enough assistance in the track. It could have ended no other way!