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Journalism of Courage
India captain Anil Kumble said on Thursday that there was nothing uncharacteristic about his outburst against critics and the media and said it was not just personal opinion but a collective feeling of his team-mates.
Stung by the criticism regarding his form and fitness and clamour for retirement, Kumble hit back through his column in which he lashed out at critics and the media for sensationalising things and asserted he would go out on his own terms.
Asked what prompted him to get even with critics through a column, something quite unlike Kumble, the India captain said, “I don’t know what is ‘unlike Anil Kumble’. I can only be myself and I think it was an opportunity for a player as the captain of the team to express my view, because we don’t get many opportunities to do that.”
Kumble said his teammates shared his feelings and stood by him. “It’s not only my view but collectively the team also believes whatever I said and they backed me in that. So I think it’s not unlike Anil Kumble, it’s me, myself…” Kumble added.
Talking about the game, the skipper was also unhappy with the growing homogeneous nature of the tracks worldwide which, he felt, was ruining the challenge of excelling in diverse conditions.
Explaining how the Bangalore track has lost its nature, Kumble said, “Wickets are changing everywhere, not just in Bangalore or India. In Bangalore, the wickets have certainly changed. Having grown up there, the wicket was totally different, the soil was red soil.
“Suddenly lot of combinations of soil are coming there and it has changed the surface. If you look at the wicket, it doesn’t bind for some strange reasons. Probably it’s because of too much mixture of various soils,” he said.
“It’s not that we are losing on home advantage but actually home advantage should always be there. As a cricketer, you travel around the world and expect various conditions and challenges and that’s the beauty of cricket. If all surfaces are similar, then the challenge is not there and that’s not something you as a cricketer look up to and look forward to. You know when you travel to Perth that it would have bounce and carry and seam movement. When you go to England, you have seaming tracks and when you come to India, you expect a spinning track as the game goes along,” Kumble said.
“But it has not been the same in the last 5-6 years and the wickets are now very similar. Most of the times you see 100 for one on the first day of a Test and rarely you see a good 60 for three. Overall, wickets have changed and we now have to adapt to whatever surface is offered,” rued the Indian skipper.
