Former India captain Kapil Dev has stirred up a hornet’s nest by arguing that cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar didn’t do justice to his talent.
“Sachin was a much better cricketer but somewhere along the line he just knew how to score hundreds. He didn’t know how to make it a double hundred, or a triple or even 400s,” Khaleej Times quoted Kapil Dev as saying.
The all-rounder, under whose captaincy India won the 1983 World Cup, added he would have advised Tendulkar to play like Virender Sehwag.
While Kapil Dev may be entitled to his personal opinion, there are certain things that he seems to forget in making such arguments. Sachin is respected across the world, by the greats who played this game, not only because of his cricketing skills but because he displayed them in his batting.
Tendulkar mostly played at a time when there was no Virat Kohli to take care of the batting when he was out. The master blaster took the task of shouldering the responsibility of India single-handedly in the 90s. If we can recall the era, Sachin’s early wicket usually meant all the other Indian batsmen fell like a pack of cards. Sachin played grounded shots applying his perfect technique to the best deliveries fired at him when expectations from him were sky high. In fact higher than any other player in cricket history.
To Kapil Dev’s point that Sachin could have made 200, 300 or even 400, he seems to forget that making 100 hundreds is no small task in cricket and reflects much more consistency, performance and ability to dominate bowlers.
It is amusing that Kapil Dev feels Sachin should have played like Virender Sehwag when Sehwag himself has said on numerous occasions that he has learnt a lot from Sachin.
That is the reason, the other cricket icons present at the event – Shane Warne, Wasim Akram and Ian Botham – did not seem to agree with Kapil’s view.
Shane Warne remarked Sachin was special and the best batsman he played against. “Sachin is a wonderful player and in my 20-odd years of playing, he is the best batsman that I played against. The expectations he was under and the skill he had against fast and spin. The way he judged the balls. He was great for the game of cricket and he was a fantastic and wonderful player. He dominated bowlers in the mid-90s and he was just outstanding against any bowler. He also played exceptionally well against Australia,” said Warne.
To be updated
