India had a formidable side in the early 2000’s which had reasonable success on their away tours as well as at home. Beating India in India was a hard task because India had the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, etc. The spin duo of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh made lives of the touring batsmen hard. Anil Kumble made his international debut in 1990 and had a long international career in which he earned respect and achieved enormous success.
Kumble was recently present at an event with the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella and expressed his views and spoke on how he overcame challenges at different stages of his career. One occasion was when India toured Australia in 2003/04 and people raised question on Kumble’s place in the team as he was competing with Harbhajan Singh.
Kumble said:
“As a cricketer, you have to hit refresh literally at the end of the every series. Challenges from one series to another are different. But I would like to mention the Australia tour in 2003-04 when I was at the crossroads of my career. I was competing for a place in the eleven (with Harbhajan Singh). People had started talking about my retirement as I was in my 30s. I got an opportunity in the Adelaide Test which we famously won.
“I was expensive on day one but came back to take a five-wicket haul. I understood the need of doing something different. So I started bowling a different type of googly, something I had learnt during my tennis ball days. That is when I realised I can make subtle changes to improve my game.”
Kumble also picked India’s 2-1 win over Australia as one of India’s greatest ever win and described it as a defining moment in Indian cricket. He said:
“The best part of playing in the 90s was that we almost won everything at home. But if you have to pick one hit refresh moment, it was the Australia-India series in 2001. I did not take part in that due to injury. That was the time when the team realised its true potential. Since then Indian cricket has gone from strength to strength and we are number one at the moment,”