Kapil as a test allrounder

[fineleg]

The only great allrounder India has ever had.

[Vijy]

Kapil's stats do not do the man's talent justice. With that said, he has only himself to blame for playing way too long (esp with respect to bowling). In a stronger team like WI, Oz or Pak of that era, I reckon his stats would have looked much better.

[rtmohanlal]

34 minutes ago, Vijy said:

Kapil's stats do not do the man's talent justice. With that said, he has only himself to blame for playing way too long (esp with respect to bowling). In a stronger team like WI, Oz or Pak of that era, I reckon his stats would have looked much better.

you are completely wrong. That is plain nonsense that Kapil played too long  just for the  sake of breaking Hadlee's record. Yes that might had been one of his intentions , but the truth was that he was still  so much  eligible  to be at the least the 11th member of that team. If we go thru series wise stats of Kapil in his last few years , we can observe this. He performed either with  the bat or ball, to be more precise his  'batting+ bowling' contribution was more than enough to  make him deserving to be part of the team. 

 

I think we need to take these adversities as the contexts he played in and evaluate him accordingly  rather than just taking plain stats.

That's why Kapil for me at least  is  the top all rounder of the FAB 4 of the 80s.

[rtmohanlal]

13 hours ago, Straight Drive said:

I would say Kapil Dev was the best cricketer India has ever produced from those i have watched across decades (Vishy, Sunny, Sachin, Dravid,  Kohli).  

 

(1).No cricketer ever has one gone to WI in 1982/83 and dominated that worlds best pace attack in history of test cricket like the ATG all-rounder Kapil Dev..... without helmet. Sunny and Mohinder Amarnath have scored a ton against this pace quartet in same series, but no all-rounder has ever batted as well against those bowlers. His 100* against the bowling lineup of Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Michael Holding.  He did that in 95 balls.  I doubt anyone in world cricket has scored at more than run a ball against the best pace attack in history of cricket at their home grounds. What was more significant that it ensured India could draw the test.Mohinder Amarnath too scored a ton in that second innings.  

 

(2.)His 9 wickets for 90 odd runs in an innings against WI remains the best pace bowling innings performance i have ever seen on the flat Ahmedabad wicket. I doubt any Indian pace bowler has ever taken a 9 wicket haul in a test innings.  Grenidge, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd were some of the main wickets he took.  Only Anil Kumble has picked 10 fer in innings against Pakistan at Kotla  which probably everyone is aware, but for an Indian pacer  Kapils 9 fer remains an unbroken record till date.

 

(3)His 175 in knockout match when we were 17/5 against Zimbabwe was fascinating. That counter attacking innings was something which Viv Richards would have been very happy.  Without that innings, the India would not have made the WC finals.

 

(4) His catch to dismiss Viv Richards in the final was a wonderful running catch. That wicket of Viv had a lot of say in our win.
 

I could go on an on about the impact player that Kapil paaji was but these are the top 4 efforts i remember from watching him play.  iirc he played 62 tests without a break, the rested for one test and then again played 63 tests without any break. No other all-rounder in history of this game was as fit as Kapil Dev. Gotta remember he did most of the bowling for India as well with his medium pace. No wonder he is a ATG all-rounder.

 

 

To add to these his '4 sixes in one over' to avoid follow on, being the top all rounder in 2 world cups(83 & 92 ... Kapil was in every sense  the Maradona of the 83 world cup), brilliant all round performance against the GOAT WI  team abroad  in 1983 series(bat avg: of 42.33 & str: rate of almost  above 95 , bowl avg: of 24+) , 129 runs at 31/6  in a team total of 215 in SAF when the test was almost lost  etc etc. This man's career was full  of such magic moments. In short ,when every body found it easy to  thrive Kapil  often recklessly   threw it away. On the other hand when every body  found it hard to survive ,Kapil   thrived  often in those adversities.

[Vijy]

4 hours ago, rtmohanlal said:

you are completely wrong. That is plain nonsense that Kapil played too long  just for the  sake of breaking Hadlee's record. Yes that might had been one of his intentions , but the truth was that he was still  so much  eligible  to be at the least the 11th member of that team. If we go thru series wise stats of Kapil in his last few years , we can observe this. He performed either with  the bat or ball, to be more precise his  'batting+ bowling' contribution was more than enough to  make him deserving to be part of the team. 

 

I think we need to take these adversities as the contexts he played in and evaluate him accordingly  rather than just taking plain stats.

That's why Kapil for me at least  is  the top all rounder of the FAB 4 of the 80s.

I am not downplaying Kapil's achievements in the least. Just saying that his bowling declined in effectiveness with age. Yes, his avg remained roughly the same as before, but he could not bowl extended spells as he did before - if you look, he was averaging around 2+ wkts per match because his no. of overs went down.

 

Of the fab 4, Botham in his first 1/3 to 1/2 of his career was a beast. Superb bowling and robust lower-order batting, but he was quite poor against the best team of his period. Imran's best batting came when he was past his peak as a bowler and vice-versa. However, if one includes his captaincy and record against top teams, I think he does very well. Hadlee does not deserve to be mentioned alongside the other 3 - he was a better bowler than the trio, but his batting was pretty ordinary. I'd put Clive Rice as the 4th member of the fab 4. He was a batting all-rounder, but he could have a genuine impact with the ball.

 

If one goes to the 1960s and 1970s, Proctor was better than any of these all-rounders as far as his bowling was concerned. His batting was somewhat inconsistent, but he could hit purple patches at times and win matches with the bat. Lots of great all-rounders back in the day, and Kapil was up there with all of them.

 

I think India has only had two genuine match-winning allrounders, who could win games with bat and with ball. One, of course, was Kapil but the second (mostly neglected/forgotten) is mankad. We won very few games those days, and mostly against weak teams, but if you look at his record in wins, it was phenomenal. Avg 40+ as an opener and played the role of both workhorse and strike bowler manfully.

[Temujin Khaghan]

10 hours ago, rtmohanlal said:

can't simply understand  what's the problem here.... a bit confused

Joke.

He is giving you so much work. Might as well pay you for your time :p

[ShoonyaSifar]

Check the bowling unit from 1979 up until Srinath and Kumble came in 1990-91. Forget seamers, we did not even have decent spinners. Maninder, Shivlal Yadav, Arshad Ayub - all I remember is them bowling 50-60 overs innings after innings.

 

That Kapil continued to play well into 1990s was itself a miracle.

[rtmohanlal]

3 hours ago, Temujin Khaghan said:

Joke.

He is giving you so much work. Might as well pay you for your time :p

ohh... it's okk ... i  first thought might be I went wrong some where ....

[Straight Drive]

13 hours ago, rtmohanlal said:

To add to these his '4 sixes in one over' to avoid follow on, being the top all rounder in 2 world cups(83 & 92 ... Kapil was in every sense  the Maradona of the 83 world cup), brilliant all round performance against the GOAT WI  team abroad  in 1983 series(bat avg: of 42.33 & str: rate of almost  above 95 , bowl avg: of 24+) , 129 runs at 31/6  in a team total of 215 in SAF when the test was almost lost  etc etc. This man's career was full  of such magic moments. In short ,when every body found it easy to  thrive Kapil  often recklessly   threw it away. On the other hand when every body  found it hard to survive ,Kapil   thrived  often in those adversities.

Yup, that was another impact innings. 4 sixers against Eddie Hemmings at Lords in the test which Gooch scored 333.  Having Narendra Hirwani as the last man batting with him, he played two dot balls and remaining 4 balls were tonked for 24 runs to avoid the follow-on.England did won the test but it was another innings which Kapil Dev showed he could do give extra ordinary performances. Hirwani got out the next ball he faced.

[Straight Drive]

Kapil Dev has not bowled even a single no ball in test cricket

Edited January 2, 2019 by Straight Drive

[GolGappe]

He came across very nonchalant as a batsman. Maybe that was his style of batting like Sehwag or didn't want to put too much energy towards batting due to his heavy workload as a bowler.

 

He had 8 high quality test hundreds and 25 odd half-centuries. If Pandya can achieve half of that as a batsman, India would be very well served.

 

I'd rate Kapil's batting higher than Yuvraj/Rohit's test batting.

Edited January 2, 2019 by GolGappe