A Perfect 10 For India Cricket

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 8, 1999 / 6:21 PM EST / CBS Sportsline

- A perfect game in baseball. A 59 in golf.

Both are rare events. But what Anil Kumble did in front of 70,000 screaming cricket fans was rarer still.

In 122 years of international cricket only one other bowler has taken all 10 wickets in an inning.

That it came during one of the sport's great rivalries -- India vs. Pakistan -- made it all the more startling.

Kumble turned in the perfect 10 in India's 212-run victory, a performance that made him the hottest topic Monday at shops and bus stops, and grabbed headlines on newspapers, radio and television.

Kumble allowed Pakistan 74 runs Sunday. That matched the feat of England's Jim Laker against Australia in 1956, when Laker gave up just 53 runs. By comparison, there have been 13 perfect games in the major leagues and three rounds of 59 in PGA Tour events.

"Pakistan knocked out as Kumble makes a killing," read one newspaper headline. Others had "Kumble takes haul of fame," "Kumble makes history with perfect 10," and "10 out of 10: Pakistan Kumbled at Kotla."

The Asian Age said simply: "Words fail this headline."

"Maybe tomorrow, when I read the newspapers, I will realize what happened," Kumble had said after teammate V.V.S. Laxman caught Wasim Akram's final out.

Many television stations replayed the entire match Monday, while others showed Kumble's bowling over and over. And all over New Delhi, children rose early to play cricket before going to school.

"Kumble is my hero!" said Chanchal Misra, a 12-year-old trying to copy Kumble's bowling action on his street.

Kumble's performance is tough to measure against other sports, but it could be seen as cricket's equivalent of a perfect game.

In test cricket, the highest level of international play, each team bats with 10 wickets -- or outs -- at stake in each of two innings.

A match takes five days to play and a single innings can last for more than 10 hours. No bowler -- cricket's pitcher -- can go the whole way, so wickets usually are spread among three or four players on each team.

India used four bowlers, but Kumble swept Pakistan himself. A leg-spinner, whose throw curves away from a batter, Kumble retired three Pakistani opponents without allowing a run and needed just three throws to take his third and fourth wickets. Overall, he threw 159 times, retiring the final four batters with just 16 runs.

"This is undoubtedly one of the best bowling performances I've ever seen," India captain Mohammed Azharuddin said.

The victory helped India split the two-test series, the first played in this country against Pakistan in 12 years. Pakistan won the first test in Madras earlier this month.

In this cricket-mad subcontinent, political rivalries have kept the Indian and Pakistani teams apart -- their armies have fought three wars since the independent nations were carved ouof one British colony 51 years ago.