Who is India's greatest test match winner ?

[saneindian]

Bhajji also deserves to to be mentioned amongst our match winners. He had a 5-er in many of our better tests wins of the last decade- 2001 Aus series, 5/29 vs Aus at mumbai in 2004, 7/87 at Eden vs SA in 2004, 5/13 vs WI at Kingston in 2006 which won us the series, 6/63 vs NZ at Hamilton in 2009 which won us a NZ series after ages, 10-fer in the win at Galle in 2008, 5/59 at Eden vs SA in 2010 to help us draw the series and save no 1 rank, 4/10 to wrap up the Saffers at Durban in 2010. Not the greatest match winner, but a very good one nonetheless.

[Ultimate_Game]

In the poll.. kumble has drowned everybody.. not surprising.

I am actually pleasantly surprised to see Kumble at the top. I thought SRT/Dravid/Laxman/Sehwag would be the ones who would get most of the votes.

[vvvslaxman]

I am actually pleasantly surprised to see Kumble at the top. I thought SRT/Dravid/Laxman/Sehwag would be the ones who would get most of the votes.

There might be some personal preference. But overall despite not a huge fan following Kumble got more votes. All the votes Kumble got would not be due to someone is fanatic about him. It is purely because they rate him as genuine match winner.

[Ultimate_Game]

There might be some personal preference. But overall despite not a huge fan following Kumble got more votes. All the votes Kumble got would not be due to someone is fanatic about him. It is purely because they rate him as genuine match winner.

Which is what I meant that it surprised me so many people thought of Kumble as the match-winner. And Kumble does have lot of fan following. He's the one who has the "Anil Kumble marg/circle" in B'lore and not Dravid or Srinath. It's just that people in India generally prefer batsmen over bowlers and that's why it is surprising to see Kumble lead the list.

[singhprakash72]

Also I think Kumble actually raised his level as geniune match winner during his last 8 yrs of career, till 2000 he had won a lot of matches for India already at home but the icing was the overseas victories at Aus,Eng,SA,Pak and WI that pushed him in that league

[vvvslaxman]

Also I think Kumble actually raised his level as geniune match winner during his last 8 yrs of career' date=' till 2000 he had won a lot of matches for India already at home but the icing was the overseas victories at Aus,Eng,SA,Pak and WI that pushed him in that league[/quote'] He had the tenacity. he could come at you all day. Bhajji easily drops his shoulders when things don't go his way. One of the best memory was this match where he started bowling seamers instead of leggies. He would constantly search for wickets. He almost won the game for us. But our late declaration could not force a win for us. http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/297808.html

[rkt.india]

Pathan won us the Pak 04 series. First overseas series win since SL in early 90s. Don't hate cause he's not a phaaaast bowler.

There was Balaji as well who has a big hand in that series win along with Pathan. I am not hating him, but one series does not make him a good bowler. He has been below average most of the time apart from that series. I dont like him because rather than progressing as a strike bowler after that 2004 series, he regressed and it is not like he did not get chances. Every time he did well in FC, he came back to the team just to be again dropped after one good several poor performances.

[rkt.india]

In 2000s we had a decent stable of pacers which came through. Nothing great but decent. In earlier part of 90s we had Prabhakar and Srinath, and in the latter part of 90s Srinath & Prasad. Srinath & Prasad as an opening pair was quite decent but the problem we had at the time was that there was no backup for them. Time and again we saw Srinath/Prasad get early wkts only for the pressure to be released after their spell was over. The drop-off between those two and others were so bad that we had likes of David Johnson, Dodda Ganesh, Kuruvilla, Kumaran as the backups which is actually similar to the current state where we have likes of Vinay, PK and Dinda:giggle: Moving on to 2000s we had Zak, Sreesant, Agarkar, Irfan, Balaji (for a couple of series before his injury), RP Singh, Ishant, Nehra, Munaf etc. Yes, these bowlers were not great but as a bowling unit along with backups they were an upgrade on the earlier bunch. And this is reflected in our better overseas record in 2000s.

We did not have a decent third pacer even in 2000s. IF two of the bowlers are bowling well, third will be dishing filth. Same thing happened in 2007 in England, 2010 in SA, Australia 2003-04. BTW, Kumaran never played test for India. Johnson barely played 2 tests, Ganesh played 4 tests, Kuruvilla played 10 tests.

[Marut]

Interesting views.... IMO only a bowler can really classify as a match winner in test matches. A batsman may score 400 or even 500 yet may not contribute to a win. But let us say a bowler takes 12/80 in a test match, most likely it translates to a win. So the biggest match winner for India would be Kumble. Batsman like Sehwag who can rattle off runs at a quick pace and put the opposition on the backfoot may be classified as match winners but seldom only their contribution to a win is greater than bowlers in test matches. Batsmen need more help from bowlers than bowlers from batsmen. Batsmen can of course play great innings ( comparable to a match win) when they perform improbable rescue acts like eating out 80 overs and fight out hororable draws. (Gambhir's 137 off 436 against NZ is certainly worthy of being compared to a match winning effort because of the stupendous effort involved)

[Ultimate_Game]

We did not have a decent third pacer even in 2000s. IF two of the bowlers are bowling well, third will be dishing filth. Same thing happened in 2007 in England, 2010 in SA, Australia 2003-04. BTW, Kumaran never played test for India. Johnson barely played 2 tests, Ganesh played 4 tests, Kuruvilla played 10 tests.

I don't have the exact stats on who played how many tests in 90s. The point I am making is that we had enough backup and depth in pace bowling in 2000s to get us a few wins. In 90s it was Srinath/Prasad or bust whereas in 2000s matches were won by Zaheer, Agarkar (in Aus), Irfan/Balaji (Pakistan), Sreesanth (SA), RP Singh (Eng) etc. My point was that we had enough decent bowlers that we never had to rely on just 1 or 2 bowlers and others could do the job which didn't happen in 90s. And overall you will see that the team with depth in the bowling generally does well, and that was one of the reasons why we were not cr@p in 2000s.

[Crookbond]

Our batting sometimes plunged to new "depths" to overcome the depth in the bowling. Basically, we had a third seamer and Ganguly generally played 3 fast bowlers + 1 seamer in foreign (and sometimes in Indian) conditions.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[riya]

Interesting views.... IMO only a bowler can really classify as a match winner in test matches. A batsman may score 400 or even 500 yet may not contribute to a win. But let us say a bowler takes 12/80 in a test match, most likely it translates to a win. So the biggest match winner for India would be Kumble. Batsman like Sehwag who can rattle off runs at a quick pace and put the opposition on the backfoot may be classified as match winners but seldom only their contribution to a win is greater than bowlers in test matches. Batsmen need more help from bowlers than bowlers from batsmen. Batsmen can of course play great innings ( comparable to a match win) when they perform improbable rescue acts like eating out 80 overs and fight out hororable draws. (Gambhir's 137 off 436 against NZ is certainly worthy of being compared to a match winning effort because of the stupendous effort involved)

Exactly, bowlers win test matches and batsmen win ODIs..with some exceptions..