By IANS,
London : Former Australian spinner Shane Warne hailed his contemporary Anil Kumble as a wonderful human being and feels the leg-spinner’s career achievements will open for him plethora of opportunities in his post-retirement period.
“I spoke to him (Kumble) the other day, actually. He’s a very smart man, engineer by trade, and I’m sure, considering everything he’s achieved, there’ll be plenty of doors open to him in India and internationally. I sense he’s weighing up his options. He’s a wonderful human being,” Warne said in his interview to Observer.
Warne who had quite a few a memorable scalps in his career, rates his famous dismissal of Mike Gatting highly. His ball pitched way outside the leg stump turned almost ninety degrees round the batsman’s legs to hit the stumps. heralding the arrival of the genius. The dismissal left Gatting with a blanched expression.
“Us spinners could never put the fear of God into them like the quicks can – we can’t physically hurt them – but we can confuse the hell out of them and we get rewarded with those facial expressions.
“Mike Gatting’s in ’93 is still probably the best. Umpire Dickie Bird’s was almost as funny. He could not believe what he had seen either. Kevin Pietersen’s wicket in Adelaide was hilarious too. He would not even look at me. Just put his head down and walked straight off really fast. That gave me no small amount of pleasure, ” Warne said.
And his most embarrassing moment? “I forgot my thigh pad against the West Indies at the Adelaide Oval and I got hit, I think, by Courtney Walsh. I did not want to let on I was hurt, so I didn’t signal to the dressing room that I needed the pad. Next ball hit me in exactly the same spot and I had to call. Dented pride, pretty embarrassing.”
Warne feels that his shoulder operation did not affect his bowling.
“I always thought I was a better bowler before my operation, but now when I look back, I think I actually was a better bowler. I definitely took more wickets because I was a smarter.
“I was not turning the ball as much but I was using my head a lot more.”