We escaped in the nick of time: Anil Kumble remembers his brush with the Tsunami

The Tsunami of 26th December 2004 still remains a nightmare for many. The worst natural disaster recorded in history hit 14 countries, wreaking havoc especially in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand. A 9.1 magnitude undersea quake in the Indian Ocean triggered a series of massive tsunami waves that killed over 2 lakh people and displaced nearly 6.5 lakh.

Former India captain and head coach Anil Kumble narrates how he came close to experiencing the ravages of Tsunami in Chennai. He describes how he escaped from the onslaught with his family while speaking with Ravichandran Ashwin on the latter's Youtube show ‘DRS with Ashwin’

Kumble was in Chennai with his family during the disaster. “It was all last-minute decisions. We were staying at Fisherman’s Cove [in Chennai]. It was my wife and I and our son – just the three of us. My son was about eight to ten months old and we travelled by air. We enjoyed the holiday and the day the tsunami happened, we were leaving,” says Kumble.

But his wife felt uneasy during the night, and the next morning, they went early for breakfast. It was then, that the first wave hit. He says, "We were having breakfast probably when the first wave hit. I was not even aware that this had happened. As we were checking out I saw a young couple in their bathrobes, you know literally drenched, and they were shivering."

Kumble couldn’t fathom the magnitude of what happened when he left his hotel but soon understood the gravity of the situation. “I couldn’t make out what it was. We just walked out and sat in the car. Immediately after the hotel, there was a bridge. And I could see, I could literally touch the water because the level of the water was barely one foot from the bridge and it was frothing. You could see the froth, I could not figure out what it was," he recounted.

He said he also saw a lot of people walking with pots, pans, and bags.
“As we were nearer to the city, closer to the airport, our driver kept getting calls on his phone. I asked him why he was getting so many calls and to focus on driving instead. But he replied, ‘A lot of water has come.’ We couldn’t believe what he was saying, there was no rain, we hadn’t heard of a tsunami. We didn’t know what was happening,” says Kumble.

Kumble says he was completely unaware of the unfolding disaster till he reached Bengaluru. “We rushed back, and when I came back to Bangalore and switched the television on, that’s when I realised that it was a tsunami," he said.

The cricketer said he made contact with the then general manager of the hotel they stayed at two years ago, who told him that the bridge his family crossed submerged in the tide soon. "We escaped in the nick of time," Kumble said.

Later, his wife revealed that the night before the disaster, she visualised god in her dream. "Certainly there was a divine blessing on us to make it!" he added