Anil Kumble versus Pakistan, Delhi, 1999

In this blog post about underrated footballers, The Guardian's Rob Smyth mentions what he calls the Denis Irwin Rule - "If more than 40% of the population say you are underrated, you cannot be underrated."

Similarly, I think enough cricket writers have called Anil Kumble under-appreciated to fully compensate for the original under-appreciation. Still, I notice a tendency among some people to downplay Kumble's 10 for 74, and credit either the dustbowlness of the Ferozeshah Kotla wicket or the trigger-happiness of umpire A.V. Jayaprakash for the wickets he took. Even the Wisden Almanack report.

Here's a video of the spell:

Of the ten wickets, those of Youhana, Salim Malik and Saqlain are classic Kumble dismissals - straight deliveries, catching the batsman either playing down the wrong line or, in the case of Malik, across the line. None of them were helped in any way by the pitch, nor was Ijaz Ahmed's, another straight one, catching his boot on the full.

With Moin Khan, it was the ball that turned just a hint, as opposed to the stock straight one that he played for, aided by a bit of extra bounce. Bounce also accounted for Saeed Anwar and Wasim Akram, both caught at short leg.

Inzamam was entirely at fault for his wicket, playing away from his body.

Which leaves just two batsmen, Shahid Afridi and Mushtaq Ahmed. Mushtaq was unlucky to face the only ball that actually misbehaved - it caused a surface explosion, and reared nastily at his glove. On a fourth day wicket, the occasional cloud of dust is to be expected. 

Afridi's caught behind is the only umpiring error I can spot. His bat seems to hit his front pad, and the replays show a gap between bat and ball as it passes. Wrong decision, but hardly a shocker.
So, in effect, one bad decision and one wicket aided by uneven bounce - hardly a biased umpire and a raging turner. Debate by all means whether this was Kumble's greatest spell (I think, for instance, that his seven for 48 in 2004 against Australia at Chennai was even better) but don't discredit his feat with inaccurate claims. 

Venkatesh Prasad

When I was a kid, a lot of the other kids I played cricket with bowled with Venkatesh Prasad's action, an action both idiosyncratic and robotic, and therefore ideal for a kid to copy and caricature. Except when I tried it, someone pointed out that I jump off the wrong foot.
Prasad's action went like this: an absolutely straight-line run-up, a towel flapping from the waistband of his trousers, and then, as he went into a side-on position, his arms would whirl in a motion that resembled a crankshaft and piston, at the end of which his left arm would drop downwards, and his right arm commence another rotation. As left elbow met hip, his right arm and left leg would form a line exactly perpendicular to the ground. At this point, he would release the ball, inevitably his stock delivery, the leg-cutter.
In the van that took me to school, the back rows discussed cricket. The joke that went around about India's bowling was - Venkatesh Prasad is a leg spinner wrongly labelled right-arm medium-fast, and Anil Kumble a medium pacer wrongly labelled legbreak googly.