Kapil Dev
It was a piece of information for me last fortnight that another name for this Indian cricket veteran was ‘The Haryana Hurricane’. For those who are deeply engrossed into this field of cricket, this may just be very trivial. On reading the entire cricket history of the man who made India shimmer in the glory of 1983, highly inspired I felt this would be a good place to share it with the folks.
The second generation buddies would tell “Mama, I want to become like Kapil Dev”. The days passed and the new ‘God’ came into the field – Sachin. Recently there was a quote on the walls of one of the grounds “One game, one hero, one God, one Sachin”. For the ‘assumed God’ himself, Kapil Dev was the role model.
Had Dev’s parents not migrated to India from Rawalpindi during the 1947 India-Pakistan partition, it would have made him play for the team which we consider as our eternal rivals. He hails from a family of nine; he was the sixth child of the seven siblings. As his father found prosperous life out here, they shifted and settled in Chandigarh. Schooling, graduation, marriage, family and so on was happy, a phase of merriment for him.
Kapil was no striker in his realm of the game. He was well-known for his bowling tricks. The right-arm pace bowler did his actions without any gauche and clumsiness. He had two steps in his mind, when he faced the ball from the opponent – hook and drive effectively. There was no need to mention him as a striker, in fact highlighting him as a bowler was important as he was called as the natural striker. This made the early literatures about him quoting him as a ‘potent outswinger’.
The reason for the title or his nick is this, as a debutant for Haryana in the late winters of 1975 facing Punjab, he made a fabulous beginning around three decades ago with a debut 6/39 innings haul. Haryana won. In the following two seasons, he was the opener for the Jammu & Kashmir team. Matches won, names earned, fame in his kitty, Kapil marched towards his glorious destination of becoming a pro globally. His international career began in 1978 at Pakistan, his Test cricket debut. Might be nervousness, the long match hours, a place away from home, the reasons for his unimpressive performance at the soils of Faisalabad. He did not forget to bring joy for the Indian team, showing his all-rounder skills he made the Pakistani batsmen go startled with his unbeatable bouncers. He rescued the team’s suffering from mal-signs of losing with his bowling tactics; this gave him the name perhaps.
Sleep with pain-killers or play with pain-killing injury?
The latter was chosen by him, this very incident was a lesson to many. In the joy of victory, pain is nothing. In the 1980- ’81 India-Australia match, which in fact seemed like a typical one, Indians losing initially with 1-0 series Kapil became someone like a leader of the ‘salvation army’ to the team. He was ruled out due to severe groin injury however he allowed himself to play in the final match with pain-hitting hard. Kapil made the team won for India.
He had always felt a difficulty in swinging his styles between the ODIs, Tests. Thank God! For the T20 had not been introduced then.
The year succeeding would be the most memorable year of the Indian cricket history, the year when our men brought the auriferous cup to the land of India, the year we won the WC-1983. There had been many articles and literature with this regard, so bypassing this would leave us with the awards he had won.
The winner of double-Padma awards, Arjuna Award, Wisden Cricketer of the Year (1983). He bagged the name ‘Indian Cricketer of the Century’ in 2002 by Wisden.
His other interests were golf which he picked up after his retirement from cricket in 1994, business and entertainment. He was the only Asian founding member of the Laureus Foundation in 2000.
Kapil has a hidden writer in him; his works includes By God’s Decree (1985), Cricket my style (1987) and Straight from the Heart (2004).
Tags: Bowler, Chandigarh, Cricket, Haryana, India, Kapil Dev, The Haryana Hurricane
