The lesser known facets of Kapil's brilliance

[Sachinism]

This is one of the more difficult essays we have attempted. So much has been said and written about Kapil Dev that the reader might well skip this piece, saying, ‘oh we have heard and read it all before’. But we are going to discuss a couple of facets of Kapil Dev’s wondrous abilities that have not received adequate attention. So bear with us, while we unfold the story and we hope it is worth your time. Whenever Kapil is mentioned, Indians usually recall two images. One is that of Kapil sprinting back many yards, that summer evening at Lords, to take the most important catch in India’s cricket history. The other is that of Kapil, 1000 watt smile, holding aloft the World Cup and his endearingly inept attempt to open and spray the champagne. If you prod some more, other images will follow, of this great spell of bowling or that fantastic innings or those four sixes in an over from Eddie Hemmings and so on. This story hopes to jog other memories of Kapil in readers’ minds. The two facets of Kapil’s genius (the only time we will use the word in this essay) we will discuss here pertain to batting. The first of these is the ability to rotate the strike. Kapil, in this aspect of batting, was not simply marvelous but on a pedestal of his own. Kapil, to many readers, will conjure up images of big hits for six or booming drives for fours. This is not illusory because Kapil had an awesome strike rate of 95.1 in ODIs, which meant he certainly biffed them a long way. But hidden or lost behind such imagery is the Kapil who hardly took a minute to settle down and before you knew it had already pushed along with a single here and a couple there, with not a sniff of violence. Why was Kapil so uncannily good at this? Quite simply because he had an innate sense of timing and a god-given gift for placement. Rarely would he push the ball straight to the fielder. It was always a few yards to the left, right or short of the fielder. He was able to do this because he was technically sound and never was this more evident than when he drove the ball. This ability of his to rotate strike was there for all of us to see in both Test cricket and ODIs. Was he really that good? Do the figures support our fulsome praise? You bet they do! In ODIs Kapil faced 3979 balls to score 3783 runs for that strike rate of 95.1. Of these hit 291 balls for fours and 67 for sixes. If you remove these 358 deliveries he dispatched for fours and sixes, you will find he scored the remaining 2217 runs of 3621 balls. In other words, he ticked along at a strike rate of 61.2 even of those balls which had not gone for a four or a six. Such rotating strike rate ensured there were fewer dot balls; the score board kept moving and he turned over the strike regularly to his partner. In fact, he was peerless at this facet of the game and we say this after studying similar statistics for the other three allrounders of his time: Ian Botham, Imran Khan and Richard Hadlee; the best one-day batsmen and finishers of his time: Dean Jones, Javed Miandad and Viv Richards; and the best finishers of modern times: Michael Bevan, MichaelHussey, and MS Dhoni. Just for a lark, we also compared Kapil’s rotating strike rate with Adam Gilchrist and Virender Sehwag, and it betters both. The nearest to Kapil in this respect are Hussey, Bevan and Dhoni who are accustomed to batting at the death and finish well. Interested readers could perhaps extend this by comparing the rotating strike rates of great batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Brian Lara and others and in case anyone exceeds 61.2, we will be very interested! The other facet of Kapil’s batting acumen that has somehow escaped attention has been his running between wickets, a feature of the game best appreciated sitting at the ground than watching on TV. The two of us have had the pleasure of watching Kapil Dev’s Test hundreds in Chennai against Australia and West Indies. Kapil always had so much time even for the sharpest single that we cannot recall him having to do anything desperate. Alive and alert to the single, he would simply lope across with a big grin on his face. What was particularly laudable was he did that in a team where only Azhar had acquired the reputation of being a sprinter between the ends. Kapil would make the laid back Dilip Vengsarkar and Sandeep Patil run with him, both for his shots as well as theirs. Kapil would twirl his bat at the end of the run; Vengarsarkar would lean on his bat to catch his breath. And yet Kapil’s judgement of a run was so good that one cannot recall a run out. Judging a run was something innate; something completely natural to him. How good was he? In a word, sensational. In 184 Test innings Kapil was not run out even once. It is a track record that obviously cannot be bettered! We would like to go out on a limb and state he would have been involved in very few run outs of his partners too. In ODIs, Kapil was run out ten times in 221 innings. On this parameter he is behind Gilchrist, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee and Richards but ahead of the other batsmen we have compared him with. Kapil was ahead of his time. He added so much more value to his superb hitting through his running between wickets and rotating the strike. His strike rate of 95.1 of course stands the test of time – with only the likes of Shahid Afridi, Sehwag and Gilchrist ahead of him. His rotating strike rate is superior to all even today. At a time when Indians are lamenting the weak running and the lack of frequency in rotating the strike, the importance of Kapil’s phenomenal ability in these two facets of batting cannot be forgotten. We end with this precious nugget: Kapil Dev never missed a Test because of injury or fitness reasons in a career that spanned 131 tests spread over 16 years. It is another facet of his career – this amazing fitness for a fast bowler – where he towers over his contemporaries as well as present-day pace bowlers. We leave you with some ODI figures to mull over. http://blogs.cricinfo.com/inbox/archives/2009/12/the_lesser_known_facets_of_kap_1.php Didn't know Kapil was that good a runner between the wickets. Those who saw him, how does he compare in your eyes to someone like Dhoni, who I think is just amazing between the wickets (along with Hussey)

[Guest Gunner]

Some day people will say the same of Dhoni. He has exactly the same qualities as Kapil.

[Dirty_South]

excellent article!

[varun]

Some day people will say the same of Dhoni. He has exactly the same qualities as Kapil.

I'm actually quite taken by the similarities in those stats for Dhoni and Viv

[Riley's Girl]

Great read!