Kapil Dev: Timing

“We had won many trophies before and after that like the team under MSD are winning now. But the joy of that day is something different. May be because it was the first time we had won the coveted World Cup. Each year for these 30 years, I start receiving phone calls and texts from the night of June 24 the way I receive the same for my birthday!”

Kapil Dev

Kapil Dev: 30 years on, I can still recall India World Cup victory

World , Way , Birthday , Time

“It appeared as if the whole nation stood up to greet me in Ahmedabad on my taking the 432nd wicket. The country was proud and that made me really happy…This was the first time in my life I realized what it is to be the number 1 in the world. It is a heady feeling almost out of the world.”

Kapil Dev

Quoted in [Dev, Romi, Kapil Dev: Triumph of the Spirit, http://books.google.com/books?id=EF_jESQMqTgC, 1994, Allied Publishers, 978-81-7023-402-9]

Life , World , Feeling , Appearance

“If you stand under a mountain and look up, you will get a bad pain in the neck. If you look at the ground and take one step, and then another step, then you come to a little bump. You think of how to climb over it; then you find a gap and you jump over it and you go on like that, one step at a time, and suddenly, you find yourself standing on top of the mountain.”

Kapil Dev

The Rediff Cricket Interview, Kapil Dev

Pain , Mountain , Thinking , Time

“Look, if you take the best batting team in the world, they too will have their weaknesses -- otherwise, wouldn't they win all the time? You mention any team to me, and I will pick out for you a dozen weaknesses. But that is not the point -- these things, like fielding, running between wickets, all these are technical things, they can be learnt and practised.”

Kapil Dev

In an interview on "Fielding, running between wickets" quoted in The Rediff Cricket Interview / Kapil Dev, 20 December 2013, Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/sports/1998/sep/01a.htm,

World , Time

“Back then, people were calling it pyjama cricket, but I think if you look back, you have to change yourself with the time and I think the administrators did the right thing. Now you look at Cricket World Cup as colourful and that’s because of 1992. It represents national pride and everybody has their own colours to identify themselves with and be proud,” said Kapil, for whom the 1992 edition was the last World Cup.”

Kapil Dev

His Views on One day cricket.
Beating Pakistan, Kapil Dev's fondest 1992 World Cup memory

People , World , Thinking , Change

“Tournaments like the World Cup, they are a bit like that -- you can't start out by thinking of how you will play the final at Lord's. You look at your first opponent and you think how to defeat him, then you think of your next opponent. It doesn't matter who you think you might meet in the final, you should only think of your next match. That is the only way to win a tournament, that is what we did in 1983, we played one match at a time…”

Kapil Dev

The Rediff Cricket Interview, Kapil Dev

World , Way , Thinking , Time

“…that if you want to do something, achieve something, you can't be thinking all the time of what you don't have… I don't have an opening batsman, I don't have a fast bowler, I don't have an all-rounder… You think like this and you are telling yourself you can't win. You have to see what you have, and then plan how to use it the best way you can, that is how to win games. Not this business of 'we don't have an all-rounder so we are not a balanced team!”

Kapil Dev

The Rediff Cricket Interview, Kapil Dev

Way , Game , Business , Thinking