'They both stood out': England great recalls playing against Anil Kumble, Sachin Tendulkar for the first time

Ahead of India's World Test Championships final and the five Test series against England, former England batsmen Neil Fairbrother and Michael Atherton sat down to discuss England's tour of India back in 1993 where the two teams faced each other in three Tests and seven ODIs.

While India swept England 3-0, the ODI series was shared 3-3. However, the tour later got to be known for two of India's then-promising youngsters, Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble, who had put on quite the show. Throughout the Test series, Kumble was the thorn in England's eye, picking up 21 wickets at an average of 19.80 and a best of 6/64.

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Recalling his early impressions of Kumble, Fairbrother discussed the promise the leg-spinner had and lauded him for honing himself in the later years to emerge as one of the world's best spinners of all time. Kumble finished his Test career with 619 wickets, making him India's leading Test wicket-taker and third-highest in the world.

"I think they both stood out, didn’t they? At that point in time, we hadn’t seen Kumble before and I think on that first tour particularly, he didn’t really take the ball away from the right-hander that much but it skidded in, didn’t it? And then latterly, as all greats, his game improved and his leg spinner got better and he himself got better," Fairbrother told Atherton in a video uploaded by Sky Sports.

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If Kumble bamboozled England with his leg-spin, Tendulkar wasn’t too far behind. The batsman scored 302 runs in the three-Test series, averaging over 100, including two fifties and a century (in Chennai) - his first on home soil. Tendulkar had already scored two centuries in Australia and one each in England and South Africa.

"As for Tendulkar then, he was marked out, wasn’t he? And that knock he played was an eye-opener as to how easy on the eye he was and how little trouble we had him in, which obviously went on not just for our team but teams all over the world thereafter," said Fairbrother.