He also named the colorful characters in the Indian team during his playing days.
Kapil Dev, India's 1983 World Cup-winning captain and arguably one of the greatest all-rounders to have graced to the game recently recalled his unbeaten knock of 175 against Zimbabwe that came in a very tense situation in the ICC Cricket World Cup 1983.
One of the greatest cricketers of all-time also revealed that it was words of Syed Kirmani that gave him the strength to save the entire Indian team from embarrassment, as his brilliant innings helped them to beat Zimbabwe in the World Cup 1983, saying “God had created that day for him.”
It was the first ODI hundred by an Indian, first by an Indian in the World Cup, the highest individual score in the World Cup till then, and the highest ODI score by a batsman of that time.
In a chat with former India opener WV Raman on his chat show 'Inside Out' on YouTube, Kapil recalled: "When you are 9/4, you are shattered from inside but since I came from a Punjabi background, I had the desire to fight. I went and asked Yashpal Sharma, ‘what’s happening?’ He said, ‘nothing, the ball is moving and we are getting caught behind.’ Soon, even Yashpal was dismissed. Then Roger [Binny] came in. I said to him, ‘let’s not go for runs but stay on the wicket. We will get runs.’”
He further added, “And then we got a good partnership. The 175* against Zimbabwe [was only possible in the last seven overs], before that the situation was very tense and we were scared... in the sense, we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves. We had defeated teams like Australia, West Indies and were feeling on top of the world, and then suddenly we were struggling against Zimbabwe. When you plan something, you should always have a plan A. Plan B and C is an option for those who are weak.
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In my life, I always had a plan A and that was to win. God was kind also [that day]. But the last seven overs with [Syed] Kirmani, he said to me, ‘Kapil pa, if there’s a chance we have to get run-out, you save your wicket.’ That gave me the strength of team spirit. And the rest is history. Me and Kiri got almost 100 runs in the last seven overs and that helped us notch up a good score. It was like God had created that day for me.”
The legendary cricketers also revealed he always enjoyed playing in Chennai’s M. A. Chidambaram Stadium. He added, “Be it a first-class game or an ODI or a Test, playing in Chennai always got the best out of me. I always performed my best in Chennai and coming to play there was great. The weather may be relentless with its heat but my performances were always good.”
Kapil also lauded the characters of the former Indian skippers S Venkataraghavan and Kris Srikkanth who made the game more colorful, adding: “In sports, you need characters like Diego Maradona or John McEnroe. Venkat and Srikkanth were both characters. I have never seen someone talk so much like Srikkanth did. Venkat was a senior cricketer and I was very afraid of him. We used to think that Venkat was half-gora (English). He would only speak in Tamil if he had to abuse.”
India's greatest ever all-rounder also felt he was a better athlete than his contemporaries like Ian Botham, Sir Richard Hadlee, and Imran Khan.
He signed off by saying, “Imran was the most hardworking player we had seen. Botham was a true all-rounder who could win matches on his own, but I was a better athlete than all three put together.”
(With TNN/Scroll.In Inputs)