Portrait mismatch at Lord's MCC academy turns Anil Kumble into Narendra Hirwani

While the Indian team goes about its business in the Champions Trophy, head coach Anil Kumble has had a lot to worry about in the past few weeks. As if the ongoing rumours about a possible feud weren’t enough, Kumble became a victim of an identity crisis, that too inside the Marylebone Cricket Club, the custodian of the sport’s laws. A caption mismatch in one of the pictures on display in the viewing gallery at Lord’s has a picture of former India spinner Narendra Hirwani bowling, with the text below having Kumble’s name in it. The glaring blunder, surprisingly committed inside the home of cricket, has a picture of Hirwani in full flow, white headband, spectacles and all, about to unleash a delivery during one of his 17 Test appearances for India. The text below the image reads: “Anil Kumble. A quick leg-spinner. Note the grip for the leg-break.“ While Hirwani was no doubt an excellent exponent of leg spin, his achievements for the Indian team pale in comparison to Anil Kumble, the country’s most successful bowler ever. Kumble was supposed to be on display, as part of the Test teams collection that houses pictures of great players as a tribute to their deeds in the past. Even 619 Test wickets and Team India’s captaincy couldn’t get Kumble a place in the esteemed gallery. The mistake appears on photo no.21, right above the indoor nets where the teams practise, and where Anil Kumble looks over the Indian team’s proceedings when they have their sessions. While Hirwani made his India debut in 1988, picking up 16 wickets as a 19-year-old, he couldn’t carry the initial spark for long, playing only 16 more Tests over a period of eight years. Kumble, on the other hand, made his debut in 1990, and played till 2008, captaining the Indian side in the twilight of his career, and returning in the role of a coach in June last year.

Kumble received MCC’s honorary life membership in 2008, along with Rahul Dravid and Shaun Pollock, the year he retired from the game. Apart from being the coach of the national side, Kumble is also the Chairman of the Cricket Committee of the International Cricket Council. While it is easy to mistake portraits of Kumble and Hirwani from a distance (both wore spectacles and sported thick moustaches in the early 1990s), such a big gaffe on the part of MCC is unexpected, and will hopefully be rectified quickly.