The making of a great allrounder: Tracing Kapil Dev’s early days and his impact on Indian cricket

It was interesting to watch Hardik Pandya finally get to bowl a decent enough spell in Test cricket, as he ran through the England batting line up at Trent Bridge in the second Test. Interesting, because this is exactly the role he has been picked for — to bowl; to take wickets; to score runs. As a pace bowling allrounder, he is supposed to do it all. Our expectations for that role have perhaps been tarnished by a certain allrounder who goes by the name of Kapil Dev Nikhanj. Even if Hardik doesn’t want to be compared, it is undeniable that every allrounder in Indian cricket will be measured with Kapil as the yardstick.

But what made Kapil so good? How was his initiation to cricket? It is interesting to look back at the early days of the man from Chandigarh even as we hope that Hardik can provide us with a fraction of the same.

There was a sense of disbelief in the commentator’s voice as India bowled another over in the first Test of the 1979 series in England.

“It has been a real turnaround in the affairs of India cricket… this Test match. So often for many years, we have seen the seamers come on for two overs and then the whole bowling being monopolised by that quartet of fine spinners they have. And now it has been seam here all the way.”

A few deliveries after the words were spoken, Kapil Dev Nikhanj got Derek Randall to edge one to the keeper, Bharat Reddy. It was a beautiful out swinger, it was in the channel, it got Randall to reach out, moved away ever so slightly before taking the edge.

Most will remember that series for Sunil Gavaskar’s brilliant 221 at the Oval in the fourth Test when India almost chased down 438 but Kapil’s 16 wickets on that tour — his first of England — were perhaps just as momentous. It finally signalled the arrival of a paceman India could trust.

In his first 10 Tests, Kapil conceded more than 39 runs per wicket — not great numbers by most yardsticks, and while he certainly had the pace and the natural outswinger, it was his batting that initially caught the eye.

Former India opener Anshuman Gaekwad, while speaking to Scroll, recalled the first time he saw Kapil Dev.

“It wasn’t during a Ranji match or even when he made his way up to the Indian team. I first saw Kapil on a tour of Kenya (then East Africa) with a Rajasthan Invitational team in 1978.”

Now, this was no ordinary invitational XI. It was filled with current and past stars. The skipper was Tiger Pataudi Jr, then there were Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Brijesh Patel, G Viswanath, Eknath Solkar, Syed Kirmani. Now, the 18-year-old Kapil wasn’t supposed to be part of that squad initially but through sheer persistence he somehow managed to convince Raj Singh Dungarpur that he deserved to be on the tour.

“Now Kapil was a typical Jat, he didn’t speak English and had a crude personality. We had heard that he was a promising bowler but on that tour he was erratic and we really didn’t get to see much of his bowling. However, what did leave an impact was his batting. His free swing — which has served him so well in golf after retirement — was there in all it’s pomp.”

In the first match of the tour, the Rajasthan invitational XI found itself in trouble and Kapil walked in at No 11. He went on to smash fours and sixes all over the park before being dismissed for 53.

“What remained with me was just how unafraid, how unperturbed he was and how hard he worked. This was a guy who, even then, never bowled no-balls in the nets.”

Coming out of nowhere

Still, there was so much unexplained about Kapil’s rise. Some attribute it to Keki Tarapore - an administrator.

Kapil was in Bombay (now Mumbai) for an under-19 camp during the mid-70s. For lunch, he was given only two chapatis and some vegetables. For a fast bowler, that clearly wasn’t enough. When the 15-year-old Kapil protested, the administrator present, Tarapore, laughed at him and told him, “There are no fast bowlers in India.”

Not one to take such treatment lying down, he decided to prove Tarapore wrong. Legend has it that the moment spurred him on for the early part of his career.

Some others say it was because he read about how India were dismissed for 42 at Lord’s during the 1974 tour of England. That was humiliation of course. And it sparked anger and a dream.

Still, in a country that treated new ball bowlers like mere get-the-shine-off players, it needed more than a dream. It needed quality to break the monotony that had been established by the spinners. And to anyone watching Kapil bowl, it was clear he had that quality.

Former India paceman Balwinder Singh Sandhu was one of those who recognised that quality early.

“Here was a young Indian bowling quick and getting movement. It was so rare in those days that we had heard of it even in Mumbai,” Sandhu told Scroll. “So when we heard that he was going to be bowling at the Wankhede stadium as part of a Duleep Trophy game in 1977, we made our way there. Now this was before he was picked for the tour of Pakistan but Sharad Rao (who played for Mumbai and Karnataka) and I got ourselves seats in the North Stand. There was something about the way he ran in and the movement he got.”

“We were excited and inspired by the show he put on. With experience, he would get better and for now, we wanted to be like him. There were a few others like Pandurang Salgaonkar who also bowled very quick but he didn’t move it. Pace alone doesn’t get you wickets. Kapil could swing it and in the early years, he was quick.”

The qualities attracted the attention of the Indian selectors. Madan Lal made his debut in June 1974 during the tour of England and Karsan Ghavri followed a little later in December 1974 against West Indies at Kolkata. They were decent bowlers but they were the support cast. India needed a spearhead.

After seeing Kapil play just 18 first-class matches, he was given the India call-up. He took 70 wickets in those matches and scored one fifty (62 against Karnataka while playing for Rest of India in September 1978). But as Kapil later said in an interview: “In that era if you bowled just a little bit fast, people looked up to you.”

“My best moment was when I was chosen for the first time as a 19-year-old to represent India (in Pakistan in 1978). I was a lad from Chandigarh which at that time was a small town but is now a happening place. I could not sleep for two nights prior to my Test debut which was the only time that happened to me throughout my career,” Kapil wrote in his book ‘Straight from the Heart’.

Tough initiation

Still, the tour of Pakistan was not an easy one. India were still not sure of that brand of cricket they wanted to play and under Bishen Singh Bedi, a safety first approach was always in the reckoning. Kapil took seven wickets at an average of 60 in that series. He was young, he was raw and he didn’t hold himself back. But the series put the onus on him to improve.

“I was his captain and didn’t really give him any particular advice as such. We threw him in the deep end and he survived that and learned how to swim on his own,” Bedi told Scroll. “But that was the thing about Kapil. He was very driven, had guts and a very, very high energy level. He didn’t rake in the wickets on that tour but it still didn’t change the fact that India had not experienced or seen a bowler like him for a very long while.”

“He could bowl long spells and his fitness levels were genuinely world class. He had an effective outswinger and he could swing that bat around with great confidence. We were seeing change.”

But the change became truly apparent in Kapil’s second series — against West Indies in India in 1978.

During the 1976 Test tour to the Caribbean, India had been treated to a barrage of bouncers in the deciding Test. So hostile was West Indies’ bowling at Sabina Park, that only six Indians were fit enough to bat in the second innings. Five ‘absent hurts’ remains a record to this day. India were forced to concede the game.

Bedi, the skipper and ever the gentleman, couldn’t believe what had happened.

“The West Indian tactics in this Sabina Park Test were not part of the game. They were a deliberate effort to subdue us,” he had then lamented.

Clyde Walcott, the West Indies manager, dismissed the statement, simply saying: “India were ill-equipped to play fast bowling.”

And captain Clive Lloyd was brutal: “This is cricket — if you get hit you have to take it!”

So when West Indies arrived on tour in 1978, all the Indian batsmen knew what was coming their way. But for once, they had a bowler who gave it back as good as he got. Wisden described the Chepauk Test as “a bumper war” – however, it was a war that didn’t please all the Indian batsmen.

“I can still remember my first series against West Indies,” Kapil told The Guardian. “Sunil was captain. And I was bowling bouncers to them and when it came to our turn to bat they really came out hostile. And my colleagues complained to me, ‘You go and face them.’ And I was very naive and young and thought what have I done wrong and Sunil was kind enough to say, ‘People do lose their patience, don’t worry. You did your job’.”

And that job was only going to get tougher as time went on. On the 1979 tour of England, India finally had a bowler who could make use of the new ball. Prior to that tour, the workload for the seamers was negligible. It was a policy that was first adopted by Tiger Pataudi, who had decided that spin was India’s strong suit… nay, it’s only suit. He used to simply say that if the sole purpose of an Indian seamer was to get the shine off the ball, anyone could do it.

1971 tour - Solkar 58 overs, Abid Ali 97.4 overs, Gavaskar 15 overs — all the spinners bowled close to 150 overs.

1974 tour - Abid 81, Madan Lal 73, Solkar 44, Gavaskar 1 — Bedi with 172.2 overs topped the bowling charts.

1979 tour - Kapil Dev 173.5 ovs, Karsan Ghavri 147 ovs, Mohinder 33.2, Bedi and Venkatraghavan bowled more than 100 too but it was clear… the tide had turned.

Kapil followed the good performance in England with an even better one against Australia when they came visiting — 28 wickets. And then perhaps came the cherry on the top: 32 wickets in six Tests against Pakistan at an average of less than 18. He was getting better with every outing. He learned quickly that bowling at the international level was not just about speed.

Sandhu, who made his India Test debut in 1983, recalls how he would often just watch Kapil in the nets… trying to learn from him.

“Those were the days before we had a coach travelling with us. So we had to learn from each other. I would keep watching him, his run-up, his wrist action, his follow through, his subtle variations. That was the only way to learn and I was determined to learn from him,” said Sandhu. “We would essentially try and copy what he was doing.”

It was a good model to latch onto as well. Madan Lal, who was Kapil’s senior, still remembers how quickly Kapil Dev seemed to pick up on things.

“He wasn’t frighteningly quick but he was clever. The good show in the early series helped him mature quickly and it filled him with confidence,” Madan Lal told Scroll. “He instinctively knew how to get batsmen out. He could out-think them and that is why he kept finding success despite dropping almost 30-40% of his pace in his later years. That is what the great bowlers do, that is what Richard Hadlee did.”

Kapil was a huge believer of putting in the hard yards. If he was coming into a series after an off season, sometimes his bowling session would last 1-2 hours. If it was during a break between series, it would still be bowling and more bowling. It would prepare him to take wickets in all types of conditions and bowl marathon spells with his accuracy.

One of the reasons Kapil is rated so highly by everyone is his record in India. 217 of Kapil’s 434 Test wickets were taken on tracks that most fast bowlers in the world looked to avoid; on tracks that were helpful to spin. Still, as always, he found a way to take wickets. Throughout his career, it was this quality that set him apart from the other Indian pacemen.

Kapil, the batsman

Kapil’s batting on that first England tour wasn’t great — 45 runs at an average of 7.50. In fact, his batting away from home wasn’t great in general. After 27 away matches, his average in those matches was 25.25. Decent numbers that were mainly buoyed by his performances on his second tour of England. In Australia after 6 innings, he had scored only 55 runs at 9.16. In New Zealand, he had scored only 27 runs in five innings at 5.40.

The batting performance on the combined tour of Australia and New Zeland was so bad that some Indian critics starting wondering whether he was worthy of the allrounder tag. Still, he persevered and got better. The thing about Kapil was that he was able to impact a match with bat or ball in the truest sense. One never quite knew how he would change the course of the game but change he always did.

And in a sense, that is what made him different. There was a dangerous streak in him that could not be quantified. During the tour of England in 1982, he thrice came close to making the fastest ever Test century, with the standout innings being his 89 off 55 balls at Lord’s.

“My philosophy is simple. Play to win. Get your runs and your wickets. Never stop trying. Hit the ball, over the slips, over the ropes. Runs on the board count,” Kapil once said.

Perhaps, he could have done a lot more with his natural batting talent but his aggression never allowed him to be circumspect. He looked ever so awkward when he tried to play a defensive stroke. Kapil had a singular idea when it came to batting — if it is in the slot, smash it. That idea also led to him being dropped for the first and last time ever — in 1984, against England at Delhi, he hit the second ball he faced for six and the third down long-off’s throat as his team stumbled to a stunning defeat.

That didn’t deter him. Adversity only got the best out of Kapil and despite an uncertain start, while his allround talents gave him the break, it was his perseverance that allowed him to become one of the modern day greats.

And in that, there is a lesson for any upcoming allrounder.