"The improved performances at Commonwealth Games, London Olympics and world tournaments by chess, billiards, snooker badminton and tennis players are evidence of the improved progress that we have made."

“Other sports can take a cue from cricket too. A generation ago, if anybody had suggested that a player from Ranchi would lead India one day, he would have been laughed at.”

“Nobody is going to be his successor, no one can replace Kumble. He is one of the finest leg-spinners in the world. Over the years he had developed variety in his bowling by working hard. I rate him very high. I do not think it was because of any sort of pressure. Media is going to be with you every time. If you play well they will praise you and they will criticise you if you play badly. And I think Kumble has taken it well in his stride. At the end of the day he is a gentleman.”

“He is a fantastic a cricketer and a human being who played his game in the right spirit throughout his career. It is a sad day for Indian cricket. It actually came as a shock to us. We will have to wait and watch, how India copes up without Kumble.”

“For years, we thought we are a sporting nation but we had little to show. In the last decade, India's sporting success has changed all that.”

“The first question that I was asked on my post retirement was how does it feel to finish with 619 wickets without spinning the ball. I said it is nice that it took 18 years to realise that.”

“No bowler in history won India more Test matches than Anil Kumble, and there probably hasn't been a harder trier either. Like the great tall wrist spinners Bill O'Reilly and his own idol BS Chandrasekhar, Kumble traded the leg spinner's proverbial yo-yo for a spear, as the ball hacked through the air rather than hanging in it and came off the pitch with a kick rather than a kink. The method provided him stunning success, particularly on Indian soil, where his deliveries burst like packets of water upon the feeblest hint of a crack, and more than one modern-day batsman remarked that there was no more difficult challenge in cricket than handling Kumble on a wearing surface.”