Kapil Dev

It’s been sixteen years since the retirement of great Indian legend all-rounder Kapil Dev. He set the example of how great an all-rounder could play a major role in team during his cricketing tenure. Before the retirement he already took 434 wickets and scored more than 5000 runs in Test cricket which was an outstanding achievement. And at present still no one has been able to break his record from which you can indicate how great he was. Many all-rounder’s from around the world such as Jacques Kallis, Andrew Flintoff, Wasim Akram, Shahid Afridi showed great promises but never were best as Kapil Dev. Though at present Shane Watson is the new promising emerging all-rounder at the moment. But the big question arise over here is when will India get an all-rounder like Kapil Dev? Will that time ever come again?

India has produced many of the epic players in terms of pure bowler and batsman. The trio of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid in batting and Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Harbhajan Singh in bowling. But it failed to produce genuine all-rounder till date. Yes, the former controversial coach Greg Chapel tried hard to make Irfan Pathan to become an all-rounder. Irfan Pathan started his career with medium pace swing bowler and was having the potential to bat lower down the order. Greg Chapel with Sourav Ganguly as the skipper of India at that time gave opportunity to Irfan Pathan to bat at no 3 position in ODI cricket. This experiment was done because Irfan was having the ability to play attacking strokes which made the coach to have a lot of trust on him to be a genuine all-rounder.

Irfan Pathan did well at start but it didn’t last very long. Today, he is not even in the national team, even as a bowler which is quite shocking. Yes, there are few players at present in team who are batsman but chips wickets which includes Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, and Suresh Raina but surely they will never going to be consistent in clipping wickets every time. It’s understood that the job of genuine all-rounder is not so easy; it really needs very good physical strength and lot of net practice in both the departments of batting as well as bowling. Even there are loads of chances of getting injury while you are doing both jobs in a match. But it’s not impossible at all to become a genuine all-rounder and perform on consistent basis.

There has been lot of cricket being played in India like all forms of domestic cricket and IPL, which have many players participating, from which many of them giving the positive signs of all-rounder. So it’s necessary that selectors keep a deep eye on them while selecting team. The role of captain will be also very important if India needs an all-rounder. He will have to take a firm decision on any player who he thinks can fill the shoes of becoming an all-rounder. If the leader backs the player, then automatically the player will strive hard for it to complete the desire of captain. M.S. Dhoni at present is doing tremendous job as skipper and we hope that he will find one in the near future. We really hope that Kapil Dev will take re-birth again in Indian cricket team.

Tags: All-rounder, Andrew Flintoff, Cricket, Indian Cricket Team, Indian Sports, Jacques Kallis, Kapil Dev, Shahid Afridi, Shane Watson, Sports, Sports India, Wasim Akram