Present Indian team best ever, says Kapil Dev

Legendary all-rounder Kapil Dev considers the current set of Indian cricketers to be the best to have played for the country.

“Without any doubt, I would say that this is the best Indian team ever,” said the 1983 World Cup winning captain, the striking backdrop of Kwazulu Natal's untamed bush framing his broad shoulders.

Kapil, along with a bunch of India and South Africa greats, is in the Rainbow Nation pushing for a novel enterprise ‘World Cricket Legends in the Wild', a one-match double-wicket event organised by Beyond Boundaries in the middle of the Phinda forest reserve, 200 kilometres from Durban.

Continuing on India's current set of heroes, Kapil said, “When they have so many records, so much experience and have done so well, you can't question their achievements. But it would be unfair to compare because one can never compare players across generations. The next generation has always been and will be better than the previous one. If it is not then the world would not be moving forward.”

Overkill

In times that were largely conducive for the broadening of cricket's base, overkill, Kapil said, was something that could put the viewer off the game. “You cannot have so much cricket that people stop coming for even ODIs. It was sad to see that against a team like England we did not have 20,000 people turning up. This is what happens when you give the crowd too much cricket.”

Kapil did not consider the advent of Twenty20s to be detrimental to the sport, but had his reservations on how the format would stand up in the years to come. “People now are getting a thrill out of T20. But Test cricket is the real cricket. T20 is good but give it 10 years and then you would know where it stands. Eventually you might find a different audience for all the three formats,” he said.

On Sachin Tendulkar's slippery 100th international century, Kapil felt that the weight of expectation might actually spur the little master on rather than drag him down. “When has Tendulkar not been under pressure? Since he was 16, we have been putting pressure on him. He is always under stress to deliver and I think he can only play under pressure.

Good part

“The good part is that he is on 99 not out, that he is still playing,” he said.

There is no pressure anymore, however, on Kapil and his motley crew — Sandeep Patil, Anshuman Gaekwad, Dilip Vengsarkar, Roger Binny and Ajay Jadeja — as they take on the likes of Lance Klusener, Mike Procter and Graeme Pollock on Tuesday on a clearing in the forest.

“This is not a competition. It's more like an exhibition of the sport. It is a great thing to merge sport and culture like this and promote a country. Such events should be organised in India too so we can take our rich and ancient culture to the world,” he concluded.