India’s first-ever World Cup winning captain and one of the best all-rounders to don an Indian jersey, Kapil Dev has opened up about another of Indian cricket’s biggest stars, Sachin Tendulkar.
Khaleej Times has quoted Kapil as having said he believed Sachin“did not know how to make double hundreds, triple hundreds and 400 though he had the ability” to scale such peaks and was “stuck in the Mumbai school of cricket”.
“Don’t get me wrong, but I think Sachin didn’t do justice to his talent. I always thought he could have done much more than what he did,” Dev was quoted as saying by the Khaleej Times.
He (Sachin) got stuck with Bombay cricket. He didn’t apply himself to the ruthless international cricket. I think he should have spent more time with Vivian Richards than some of the Bombay guys who played just neat and straight cricket. 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.
– Kapil Dev, Former Indian Captain
The great all-rounder, under whose captaincy India won its maiden World Cup in 1983, said he would have advised Tendulkar to play like Virender Sehwag.
“He (Sachin) had the ability. He was technically sound but I felt he was there to get his hundred and that’s it. Unlike Richards, Sachin wasn’t ruthless, he was more of a perfect, or rather correct cricketer. Had I spent more time with him I would have told him ‘go enjoy yourself, play like Virender Sehwag’. You will be a much better cricketer.”
(With inputs from PTI)
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