Cricket is combined game of brilliance with bat, magical spells with the ball and strenuous fielding. To win a game of cricket, a team needs to put up a good score, then bowl very well and maintain to cease runs with good fielding also. If fielders remain lazy on field and keep on giving runs, a defeat might not be far. Most of the modern Indian cricketers are known for their skills as good stopper of runs but it was not the case always, though India has seen rare talents in the likes of Mohammad Kaif, Yuvraj Singh etc. Anil Kumble is name on whom Indian bowling attack used to depend a lot during his time, but if we’re talking about fielding, he is surely not the one the captain would love to post at tricky positions.
But here is one incident where his brain proved efficient enough to save some runs and how!
It was 1999-00 India’s tour to Australia and the two teams were having a warm-up practice match. Australian grounds being larger than usual makes it even more difficult and tiring for fielders to stop runs. Anil Kumble has a reputation of being lazy on the field and to add more to that, here’s one incident where in that match, a batsman hit the ball hard and while he was chasing it, the batsmen kept running. While might be thinking that they would have made 3 or maximum of four by the time he reaches the ball, when he actually did, they had already run for four. As Kumble saw them running for 5 runs, he promptly kicked the ball to boundary. You think that’s a out of anger? You are wrong. He kicked it for four so that the opponents could get only four runs as per cricket rules and not five, which the batsmen would have completed by the time he would have thrown the ball back to the keeper. Brain-storming he did, isn’t it?
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