Irfan Pathan was talked about as our next great all rounder, but in the prime of his career, he seems to have lost his way. The likes of Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra disappeared after a few seasons. One is not sure how long a Munaf Patel or Sreesanth will last. So why is it that we have not found a worthy successor to the great Kapil Dev?

Following the first overseas victory by an Indian team in the West Indies after 35 years, there is little doubt that a comparatively young outfit has every reason to be jubilant and confident. But those who are at the helm of affairs, that is, in making cricketing decisions, are well aware that a top class all-rounder of the Kapil Dev Nikhanj variety would make a major difference. In fact, anyone half as good would be an answer to the prayers of fans.
English cricket followers, who wondered whether there would be a successor to the mercurial Ian Botham, had to endure a long and frustrating wait before Andrew Flintoff arrived. He did take sometime to identify the role that he could play in his country's cricket and after that, knocked off his superfluous weight. But when it emerged that his bowling was almost on par with his batting, he knew he would be the all-rounder the country required.
There was plenty of encouragement for Flintoff and one aspect of it was the patience shown by the selectors and the Zimbabwe-born and now United Kingdom citizen, Duncan Fletcher. Fletcher, in his time, was not an inconsiderable player; he was an all-rounder, who more than held his own representing Zimbabwe, the then babe in international cricket. Among the England players, he is rated very highly and therefore, respected.
Flintoff's potential was noticed very early, but when he was young and hence, impressionable, it was not very easy to get him to be focused. But then you do not discard a diamond because it is encrusted in dirt, having been underground for many, many years. It was probably not the same case with Botham, who early in his career came under the profound influence of that shrewd and hard-as-nails former Yorkshire and England captain, Brian Close. Close was leading Somerset in 1974 when young Botham made his bow in first class cricket, and you could trust a Yorkshireman to make the right judgement.
While most other countries at some point had an all-rounder who could bat effectively or dangerously and then bowl with the new ball penetratively, Indian cricket could not find such an individual. The only exception from the mid-40s and almost through the whole of the '50s was Dattatreya Gajanand Phadkar, known as Dattu. He was a magnificently proportioned cricketer as well as strikingly good-looking. Quite rightly, he was the forerunner to Kapil Dev, though in his years at the top, India were generally at the receiving end.
Phadkar was the true professional in times when this category of player was not really looked upon with favour by the establishment. The other was Vinoo Mankad, who was the best the country had before Kapil Dev came on the scene. Mankad, though, was a left-arm spinner and a hard-hitting right-hand batsman. From Mumbai, Phadkar honed his skills in the Lancashire League. However, it was said then that his stint with Alf Gover's School in England did more harm than good to his fast bowling skills. He was never the same after that. But at his best he was a fine bowler, fast-medium, who could swing the ball at will and cut it when the conditions required him to do so. In addition, he was a top class batsman who was good enough to make a century and three 50s against Sir Donald Bradman's Australian team in 1947-48.
In spin dominated times - with Mankad, Subhash Gupte and Ghulam Ahmed doing the bulk of the bowling - he took 62 wickets in 31 Tests and scored 1229 runs at 32.34. He also played 13 unofficial Tests against very strong teams. In these he took 37 wickets and scored another 700 runs at 36.84. If the latter Tests had counted, he would have finished with 1929 runs and 99 wickets and surely with some luck, completed the all-rounder's double of 100 wickets and 2000 runs, a distinction for India, long held by the admirable Mankad.
Between Phadkar and the arrival of Kapil, there was a vacuum as far as genuine pace bowling all-rounders were concerned. The only significant pace bowler in the interim was that pocket-sized dynamite Ramakant Desai, quite appropriately nicknamed 'Tiny'. Desai was quick enough to hurry a batsman of the calibre and composure of Hanif Mohammed, though the legendary Pakistani viewed the bouncer the Mumbai man bowled, as suspect. However, Desai was a force for quite sometime, especially in a climate that was not encouraging to bowlers of this type.The advent of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi as captain proved to be a discouragement. Pataudi, who had learnt his cricket in England, played fast bowling very well. He was somehow dismissive of the efforts of his own countrymen in this area of endeavour. He relied on spin as his team's main weapon.
Kapil took Indian cricket by storm, because it had never seen the likes of him before. Not quite blessed with the pace of Mohammed Nissar of 1932-33 vintage, he had enough of it to trouble the Pakistanis on his first tour in 1978. And then he batted with rare freedom and one could see the unbridled spirit of the Jat warrior. His records speak for themselves. In 131 Tests he took 434 wickets (for a time, the world record) at a shade under 30 and pulverised 5248 runs at 31.05 ( a trifle disappointing for one whose batting talent was prodigious). But add to these his one-day achievements, where in 225 matches he scored 3783 runs and took 253 wickets.
He never missed a game through injury. His fitness was the envy of all, and the many hours of sustained hard work he put in day after day, either in matches or during practice, is a tribute to his pursuit of excellence and his perseverance. Had he not bowled a single over, he could have been one of the finest batsmen ever produced by the country. Also, he was among the most wonderful fieldsmen, with an arm that was second to none and hands that caught without an effort either in the deep or at slip. He was India's Keith Miller, and like Australia has never seen the equal of that handsome World War II pilot, India is hardly likely to see Kapil Dev's match.
It was Kapil's success that inspired more young Indians to take to pace bowling, though the only successor of note was Javagal Srinath, who, at his peak, was quicker. Even then the wiry Srinath packed up early after an enviable career, because he found the workload was becoming too heavy. He wanted to restrict himself to limited-overs cricket and there was no way that the authorities or the team's management could be persuaded to think in his favour. But posterity needs to remember his invaluable contribution with the ball as the spearhead of the Indian attack. In 67 Tests he had 236 scalps at 30.49 and in one-dayers he played 229 matches and finished with 315 wickets at 28.08. As a pace bowler, he is only second to Kapil.
The standards that Kapil has set are Himalayan and by the look of things, one cannot see any one of the new crop of bowlers of this variety match the Haryanvi in any way. Forget the batting ability, for though Ajit Agarkar has made a Test century at Lord's (England captain in that match, Nasser Hussain, would still be pondering how he let the Mumbaikar get away) and though Irfan Pathan has the makings of an all-rounder, he has a very long way to go before he can be classified as one.
Has anyone bothered to ask Kapil how he kept himself in such fine shape for so long? That is, all the physical training experts and the dieticians now involved with the game all over the world. If one were to mention to him the number of injuries plaguing pace bowlers and all the talk of player burn-out, he would surely be intrigued. It is not in his nature to be dismissive for he understands what wear and tear is all about. How is it he avoided these?
His supreme attribute as a bowler was that he learnt with every match. His consistency was his forte and while he lost an iota of pace over time, he also developed a quite unbelievable control over swing and line. The length he varied of course, according to the reach and the height of a batsman. He never allowed any batsman to rest easy, probing all the time and willing, at times, to experiment.
There is a separate sort of intelligence needed for each of cricket's skills - batting, bowling and fielding. And at least in two areas-bowling and fielding-he had more than his share of it. Not that he lacked it when batting, but being fundamentally a bowler at heart, he used batting to unburden himself of strain and pressure. He enjoyed himself, and being essentially a strokemaker, liked to take the attack to the bowling. It was one of the reasons that he liked to bowl to aggressive batsmen, for therein lay the challenge. Someone like Sunil Gavaskar or Allan Border would test his patience. And he was not a patient individual when he was playing. He always wanted things to happen and his approach was to try and make things happen.
Even Kapil had a flaw at the finish of his delivery, as his chin would drop on his left shoulder. But wisely he let that remain unremedied as he sensed that a remedy could otherwise upset his rhythm. It would have been the equivalent of a coach advising Sachin Tendulkar to change the grip of his right hand on the bat handle. There is a sound reason to advocate a crash course by Kapil Dev to the present crop of young Indian pace bowlers on how to stay injury-free. But then it is all a matter of his communication skills being adequate. The authorities, however, need to prepare a full length film of Kapil's career and show it to all aspiring pace bowlers from the junior most level. There has to be an educative commentary both in English and Hindi, and if this is interspersed with comments from batsmen and bowlers of his time, then it could go a long way in guiding pace bowlers.
Kapil epitomised, among other things, fitness and consistency that are conspicuously lacking in the present crop. And while waiting for another genius to arrive would be like the Jews waiting for the messiah, for Indian cricket to be able to take 20 wickets to win Test matches, the pace bowlers have to be fit and ready. It is not always that the team plays an outfit like the West Indies that could fall prey to inexperienced pace bowlers. To gain experience one must play and to play one must be fit. Kapil Dev is the supreme example in the history of the Indian game.
There is also the aspect of bowling technique. If it is faulty then it leads to various complications. This is one of the reasons why there is an emphasis of having a bowling coach, especially to assist pace bowlers. In England in 1979, Kapil Dev himself was worried that he had temporarily lost his potent outswinger. He chatted with former England pace bowlers and listened very carefully to what they had to say. There was no one in the Indian team who could have advised him in this regard. He did, however, talk to Sunil Gavaskar and the vice captain GR Vishwanath, so that he could get a view from a batsman's perspective. But then he had to sort things out for himself. He did and in the first Test at Edgbaston he took all the five England wickets to fall in the long innings it played and which was featured by a double century by David Gower.
He watched and learned. His contemporaries were bowlers like Bob Willis and Ian Botham (England), Dennis Lillee and Craig McDermott (Australia), Imran Khan (Pakistan), Sir Richard Hadlee (New Zealand) and the West Indies quartet of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and the finest of all of them, Malcolm Marshall. He played more Tests than any of them.
He has to be the role model for India's new crop of fast bowlers. As Michael Holding observed not too long ago, "Unfortunately there seem to be pace bowling coaches who are not teaching the basics right and going about it in a manner that is to the detriment of the bowlers." Talk about hitting the nail on the head. Holding had the best sideways action one could hope for in a fast bowler. And among Indians, Kapil Dev stands supreme.

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