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This is an archive article published on May 29, 2009

Spinners can’t be just run-stoppers anymore: Kumble

In the pomp and show that followed Deccan Chargers’ IPL victory,Adam Gilchrist’s out-of-sync dance down the track and third-ball ‘duck...

In the pomp and show that followed Deccan Chargers’ IPL victory,Adam Gilchrist’s out-of-sync dance down the track and third-ball ‘duck’ was forgotten. Besides,Anil Kumble,the man who managed the ‘Gilly coup,’ is the last person to speak about winning individual battles after losing the war.

But a week after Kumble raised the mercury in the IPL final during his first over at the Wanderers,the Bangalore Royal Challengers skipper spoke of how his plan to get Gilchrist early worked.

“Looking at the conditions,I decided to bowl slow,forcing the batsmen to come at me. They generally expect the ball to come on to them when I am bowling but that was not the case. I did the same to Gilchrist,” he said. Kumble also said that merely restricting the batsmen was no longer effective in T20 cricket. “I backed myself and flighted the ball. Spinners shouldn’t just consider themselves as run-stoppers; they should concentrate on taking wickets,” he said.

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That’s a far cry from the early days of T20,when spinners merely concentrated on bowling in the block hole,trying to dry up the runs. Among the top five wicket-takers in South Africa were Kumble and left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha.

Kumble was also of the opinion that the pitches in England for the T20 World Cup wouldn’t be very different from South Africa. “The wickets in South Africa were on the slower side and I expect the wickets in England too to be similar,though perhaps helping the seamers a bit more,” he said.

Considering the success of slow bowlers in the IPL,India will be banking on Harbhajan Singh and Ojha to deliver.

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