Anil Kumble finally achieved the one feat on the cricket field that had eluded him for a long while. His century (110 no) at the Oval Test against England on Friday took the monkey off the leg-spinner’s back, so to say. For all his batting prowess on the domestic circuit — the Karnataka player has six centuries at the first-class level — Kumble has remarkably under-performed as a batsman at the international level.

The closest he came to scoring a century was in the 1996-97 home series against South Africa in Kolkata. He linked up with skipper Mohammad Azharuddin in the middle when India were staring at follow-on at 161 for six in reply to the visitors’ 428. The duo added 161 runs for the seventh wicket to avoid the follow-on though they couldn’t save the match. Kumble, the last man to get out in the innings, scored a doughty 88 runs (124b, 13x4). And it took almost a decade for the genial leggie to reach the milestone.

“I’ve had many useful partnerships with him (Kumble) lower down the order. And I vividly remember the partnerhip in Kolkata against South Africa. That association helped us avoid the follow-on,” Azharuddin told Deccan Herald here on Saturday.

“It’s a remarkable achievement though I would say it came a lot late in his career. He had it in him to score a century in Tests and on so many occasions he had come close to doing it,” added the former India skipper.

Ever the one to fall back on Kumble to take wickets, Azharuddin said he never asked the leggie what he should do. “I never pushed him to score a century. I never told him what he should do with the ball and neither did I tell him what he should do with the bat. He knew what he had to do,” he said.

 Azharuddin attributed Kumble’s success to his commitment. “No matter how much skill, talent and guts you have, if there is no commitment you can’t achieve what he has.”

Expressing his happiness over India’s imminent Test series win in England, Azhar hoped the victory would erase the bitter memories of India’s World Cup debacle.