Giving the Dev its due

Even a cricketing public obsessed with figures will agree with the choice of Kapil Dev as Wisden8217;s Indian Cricketer of the Century. Of ...

Even a cricketing public obsessed with figures will agree with the choice of Kapil Dev as Wisden8217;s Indian Cricketer of the Century. Of course, he has the requisite records against his name but he means more to Indian cricket than mirthless statistics.

He was the cricketer who put team before self, bowled his heart out and batted like there was no tomorrow. In short, he played in a typically Indian way, with heart rather than head, someone Everyman could identify with.

Gavaskar may eternally be the Little Master and Tendulkar the next Bradman but they will rarely, in the public imagination, rise above an agglomeration of statistics, above the sneaking suspicion that they always had half an eye on the next record.

Kapil, by contrast, will forever be associated with that glorious day at Lords when he held aloft a silver trophy and heralded the coming of a new age. There are many facets to him: pinch-hitter, ace bowler, flop coach, successful businessman.

His name figured in the match-fixing scam when he famously broke down on TV while defending himself. Through it all, he remained the uncut diamond to the more polished graces of his fellow greats. Who else would agree to an ad that accentuated the Haryanvi in him? And on whom else would it have worked?

It can be argued, of course, that Gavaskar opened the door for Kapil; that the Haryana Hurricane came into a team which already had one world-class player. Gavaskar was the first Indian cricketer to demonstrate the quality of grit, of being able to stick it out against the fast and the furious.

Kapil took that one step further: he showed us the quicksilver art of winning. He was helped 8212; Indian cricket was helped 8212; by the fact that Lords, 1983, coincided with the beginnings of the TV age 8212; colour TV had just come in.

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The saturation coverage, that is now the norm, was soon to follow. It took Indians on a rollercoaster ride through another famous win Down Under in 1985, a series win in England and several years of drought before the Tendulkar Era.

Today, cricket is more than a game, it8217;s a giant corporate machine on which several fortunes depend. The game itself has shifted base, for all practical purposes, from Lords to South Asia. Yet perhaps the wheel has come full circle. There is more than the obvious parallel between that rough-hewn group of cricketers spraying champagne on each other 19 years ago and the young turks who fashioned an equally improbable win last fortnight.

Playing with passion is back in fashion; Saurav Ganguly may be despised by his peers but they will be the first to acknowledge the effect his fierce will to win has had on his team. Leading by example; fewer did it better than the man from Haryana. To use a cliche, Kapil da jawab nahin.