Ahead of important Test series in England, 1983 World Cup-winning captain says R. Ashwin has to step up his game abroad.
New Delhi: Kapil Dev, the man who turned Indian cricket on its head when he brought the World Cup home in 1983, believes the Indian cricket team today is “fantastic”, and the deserving No.1 team in the world.
In an exclusive interview with ThePrint, Dev insisted that captain Virat Kohli will be counted as one of the greatest players in cricket history. “Virat Kohli is among the top 10 players of all time. His name will be written in the history of 200 years of cricket, like Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar,” he said.
The Indian team begins a five-Test series in England Wednesday, which will be crucial given its abject failure in these conditions in 2011 and 2014, but Dev was upbeat.
“You don’t judge a cricket team over three or five weeks. You have to judge in the last 15 years, and they have achieved everything — they have won the World Cup, they are ranked No.1 in the Test and ODI rankings. Just because they lost to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy (final) doesn’t mean they are bad,” he said.
“We were right at the bottom in our time. Now we are number one. One Champions Trophy doesn’t mean Pakistan is on top; Pakistan still has to fight very hard to get there.”
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Asked about the bowlers he thought were crucial for India’s success, Dev picked the young Jasprit Bumrah (who is currently injured), alongside established campaigners like Ravichandran Ashwin and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
Bumrah, he said, was superb, and hoped he would come back strongly from his injury. But he had a word of advice for Ashwin.
“Ashwin bowls extremely well. He has to now do well abroad. Nobody has done 150 years in cricket what he has achieved as a bowler, taking so many wickets in a short time.”
Dev refused to say a single word about the Supreme Court’s management of Indian cricket.
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Kapil Dev, like the Indian tiger, has always been a large hearted gentleman.