'I played cricket & live life on front-foot'
Posted on Jul 06, 2008 at 15:39 | Updated Jul 07, 2008 at 01:27
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Tags: cricket, cricket interview, Kapil Dev
A week after the silver jubilee of his team's magnificent World Cup win in 1983, former India captain Kapil Dev spoke to CNN-IBN's Anuradha SenGupta about cricket, controversies and a life which has been more than just a roller coaster ride.
Anuradha SenGupta: We are meeting you a week after the 25th anniversary of the World Cup win. This has been a trip down several memory lanes. What is the sharpest memory that comes back to you of that huger success?
Kapil Dev: I think lifting the Cup was the most important thing. It is every cricketer’s dream to do something great for your country. And once we lifted the Cup it was a great moment, a great feeling for everybody. It is difficult to express in words, it was just a joyful ride.
Anuradha SenGupta: That’s all you remember?
Kapil Dev: You know happy days go quickly. But when the bad days come, they tend to stick along much longer. How these 25 years passed is amazing and I was delighted to meet everybody. Everybody is healthy and wealthy. They look more content and happy. That as a captain and as a part of the team, made me feel happy.
Anuradha SenGupta: You gave Indian cricket’s first fast bowler, you are in that sense Indian cricket’s pioneer. Take us back to that time when you were a young guy and growing up in Haryana. You were called Kukoo?/I>
Kapil Dev: My mom still calls me that and so do my brother and sister with love and affection. I was just a naughty guy like any guy on the street who was not known. I think I did all the good and the bad things that all guys do. When you start playing cricket and you want to represent your country.
Anuradha SenGupta: When did it come into your consciousness that I’m just a kid playing cricket but tomorrow I want to play for my country. When did that happen?
Kapil Dev: I think somewhere in 1975-76, the first time I went to the Under-22 camp and I was barely 17 and I had senior guys with me in that camp. Hemu Adhikari, who is a former cricketer, started telling the senior players that ‘look at how he takes a catch and look at his run-up.’
When you play, you don’t know if have the talent but other people can assess. They suddenly started saying that this guy has the talent and I went back and started saying to myself that – these are the top cricketers that we have and out of them some of them are going to play for the country, maybe even I can play. That was the only change that I required and when I went back there was a day-night difference in my approach.
Nobody asked me to get up and play. The motivation came from within.
Anuradha SenGupta: I was reading your book – Straight from the heart – and there you have mentioned that you cut out everything that was not helping you, weather it was friends or habits. You started eliminating things that didn’t contribute to help you achieve your goals. How difficult was it to do what you did
Kapil Dev: It was not that difficult. When things start rolling and you are performing and doing well, nothing is difficult. It is only difficult when things are not going for you. You are performing, you are taking wickets, you are scoring runs and happiness makes you work more.
Two things can come out of it. Either you become complacent and arrogant and start believing that you know everything. Or you start working because you want to be the best in the world.
Sunil Gavaskar was the pioneer in giving us that realisation that we can be the best in the world.
Anuradha SenGupta: There is the story of your father getting two buffaloes and you had to drink a lot of milk.
Kapil Dev: It just happened that my coach and my brother met and they decided that I need proper food. I don’t know how that went to my father but suddenly there were two buffaloes. I was born in Chandigarh and we have a timber business. So we have a big timber place behind the timber market and there they kept the buffaloes.
My mother was petrified and she said: ‘How are we going to handle 15-20 liters of milk as day?’ My mom then used to make buttermilk and butter. I had never eaten that white butter. My mom used to put that butter straight in my mouth and it was tasteless. But it was good for me. So I started enjoying myself.
Anuradha SenGupta: All the cricketers that are in the reckoning today for the national team that are from small towns who come from small towns like Piyush Chawla and Praveen kumar. Would you agree if I say you were the prototype for this mould of cricketers, somebody who from the grass root level can make it to the world stage
Kapil Dev: If you say that then I feel very proud and happy about it. But in time I can predict that more cricketers will come from the smaller cities. Small city people are very hard working, they want to prove to the world. That’s where you are ready to fight against all odds. In the last 15 years we have had cricketers from unknown places like Raipur and Aurungabad. Like I was the first one to play from Chandigarh but after me at least 10 people played in no time. You believe that if one boy can play from that town then many more can.
Bombay was a pioneer in that. There have been 3-4 cricketers from Shivaji Park alone. If one is playing, another who used to play with him also gets that confidence. Now with time to come smaller cities will produce more hard and ruthless cricketers.
Anuradha SenGupta: And more successful?
Kapil Dev: Definitely when you have the team that is more aggressive because sports does require more aggression and I think that cricket was not what it was 40 years ago – a gentleman’s game. Today you are playing to win and that’s it.
Anuradha SenGupta: That was pretty much your style as a cricketer. You play on the front-foot as they say in cricket?
Kapil Dev: I think I’m more passionate about whatever I do. I just want to give more than 100 per cent, I don’t know about front-foot and back-foot. Like if I’m giving you an interview, my mind should be here completely. I’m not planning what answer I have to give.
Anuradha SenGupta: Why is that?
Kapil Dev: People in our country, I think, should be more forthright. So many starts I have seen who want to hide themselves and project something, which they are not. I think you should be always who you are.
Anuradha SenGupta: You have seen things from the top where people have loved and from the bottom when you have fallen because people have questioned your integrity?
Kapil Dev: I will always say that if you know who you are then the dip and the high will not bother you so much. And people will want to throw you down because there are all kinds of people in this world but are you honest to yourself that is the question.
Anuradha SenGupta: With the match-fixing allegations, you have defended yourself, the CBI interview has come out and everything is over now and is history. But have you come to terms with it and overcome it or is it still the worst time of your life?
Kapil Dev: I think it’s education, let’s put it more positively. I think those kind of things only teach you how to become a better person and a stronger person. If somebody points a finger at you, it is important to know if you are wrong or right.
The only thing I felt that entire episode is that the media should be more responsible, not for me but for the country the media should be a little more responsible rather than make sensational news.
Anuradha SenGupta: You decided not to file a defamation case.
Kapil Dev: When I was talking to my lawyer and he turned around and said, which was the most interesting point in my life, ‘Kapil, there is no problem; it will take you a minimum of 25 years to get this. But no way you can lose; you are a winner.’ And I said if I’m the winner, then I don’t need 25 years and I just tore the file and threw it in the dustbin.
If I get a result of what happened after 25 years then I don’t think I’d like to wait for a negative report for 25 years. And that’s when my life changed.
Anuradha SenGupta: Have you forgiven Manoj Prabhakar?
Kapil Dev: Who am I to forgive him? I’m not big enough to forgive him or anybody. I said then also that I’d go to the temple and wish for him.
Anuradha SenGupta: When you played cricket, you were at the top of your game but you also found other things to do whereby you could continue to lead a lifestyle that you were used to.
Kapil Dev: Perhaps better because at that time life was different. But today, thanks to everybody, the advantage of being a sportsman and if you think like a businessman, you have an edge over other people because you have played the game, you can go and meet people. And in business, they say if you can put your project across to other people, half the battle is won.
Anuradha SenGupta: Are you a better businessman or a better cricketer?
Kapil Dev: Let me remain a cricketer. My sports lighting is the biggest business, doing cricket stadiums of hockey and football. And this is what I thought of 14-15 years back. Everybody loves making money and if you make legitimate money, it just gives you a shine on your face and a smile and you feel happy.
Look, after you stopped playing cricket, you are not begging to thee cricket administration for a job. I’m not just depending on earnings from cricket.
Anuradha SenGupta: With the BCCI’s rejoinder- IPL and the kind of success it has seen, do you feel you backed the wrong horse?
Kapil Dev: Not at all, it’s just a question of improving. Can a cricketer a good administrator or not? I think he can be. I have all the respect for the BCCI in every sense and there is no fight. And they didn’t just felicitate us; they felicitated themselves also.
It is the cricket board that we all played for. I like to be an administrator; I like to work on the administration. But nobody gave me the administration and if someone else gives you that opportunity, then you say – this is something I dreamt about and I want to do it. I am very happy because I’d rather be a king in my own den than a small fry in a big place.
Are you happy with what the ICL has achieved?
Kapil Dev: Much more than that. Let’s put it this way – Well done, IPL and well done, ICL because what are we working for is the betterment of the Indian cricket. If somebody says that’s wrong, I will stop tomorrow.
Anuradha SenGupta: But as a businessman, the ICL is not seeing the kind of success it could have seen, does that bother you>
Kapil Dev: How are you presuming that we haven’t seen the success? If we haven’t seen success, then IPL won’t have been there. We saw the success and then they saw the success.
It depends on the sponsor, if he says keep playing, we will play for long. My job is to ensure the cricket we are playing on the ground is of good quality. Are we going to give what we promised the cricketer? Are the former cricketers ready to work for what we are giving them? If yes, then I’m happy; on a scale of 1-10, I’m 10.
Anuradha SenGupta: And you have met those promises?
Kapil Dev: Much more than that. I never expected ICL will go that far so fast.
Anuradha SenGupta: On the cricket field, is there anything that you will term as a regret or something you wish you could have completed more successfully or better than you have?
Kapil Dev: 100 things, every time you lose a match you wish if you had worked a little harder.
Anuradha SenGupta: Not in terms of individual games but cricket overall. Some people who follow the game very closely say Kapil had the most chances and the biggest stints as captain but he didn’t do what Imran Khan did. He didn’t manage to mentor or nurture a whole bunch of other fast bowlers.
Kapil Dev: Our country is a very big country and I had taken a step to become a fast bowler, which no cricketer took. Everybody wants to become a Sunil Gavaskar or a Sachin till today. But if I look at the last 15 years we have produced enough fast bowlers who may not have sustained that long but you feel happy that the trend has changed from the 70s and the 80s where the second over was bowled by a spinner.
Now I think our captain and the team depend on the fast bowlers that is good enough for me.
Anuradha SenGupta: Kapil Dev, thanks for sharing some stories with us and we wish you in all your endeavours a lot of luck and live life like the way you have played your cricket.
Kapil Dev: On the front-foot.
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