England Has A Ruthless Approach In ODI’s For The First Time In 40 Years, Feels Kapil Dev

May 17, 2017 at 8:00 PM

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England Has A Ruthless Approach In ODI’s For The First Time In 40 Years, Feels Kapil Dev

Kapil Dev has rated hosts England as the most exciting team in the upcoming Champions trophy which is scheduled to commence from 1st June. He cited the explosiveness in the English unit as the reason behind this judgement.

The 1983 World Cup winning captain’s perception isn’t wrong at all. England, in recent years, has seen the emergence of some highly talented ‘limited overs’ specialists capable of thrashing the opposition.

“I think of England. For the first time in 40 years, England has given me the impression that it is producing players for one-day cricket. It has a ruthless approach with players like Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, Joe Root, Eoin Morgan and Ben Stokes,  said Kapil in a recent interview with The Hindu.”

“They can win matches on their own. That’s the sort of the team we had … Dhoni, Sachin, Yuvraj, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag. For the first time, I feel England has so many good players who on their own can win matches.”

He also had a special word of praise for England’s MVP Ben Stokes. The star all—rounder has been gaining new admirers each passing day, thanks to his consistent performances across all three format.

Kapil was so overwhelmed by Stokes that he went on to rank him on the top in the list of all-time greats like Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and Ian Botham apart from himself.

“He is much better than (Imran, Hadlee, Botham and me). We have to respect these young players. They are far better. I don’t think I like to compare, but these boys take more pressure and play more cricket. It’s not easy to play like this across all formats. I will respect them more than us. Stokes is known to be a batting all-rounder; his bowling is handy to the team, same like Jacques Kallis. We were all bowling all-rounders. Stokes is a far better batsman than any one of us were.”

While Kapil was quite sure about England’s effectiveness in the tournament, he gave a very politically correct answer when asked about the favourites to win this edition of the multi-nation tournament.

“Once you see a couple of matches, it will be easy to make a statement about the conditions and form. I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth now.”

India will be entering the tournament as the defending champions, having won the title back in 2013 under the leadership of MS Dhoni, the last occasion when the tournament was staged. The present team, which will be led by Virat Kohli, also is similar to the team that won the honours four years ago.

The selectors opted for experience over glamour in a bid to keep the strong and less vulnerable side to failures. But, Kapil seems to be unsure whether India would enter the tournament as favourites or not.

“It’s very difficult to say that. If I look at the Indian team on paper, it looks fantastic, but it would be very unfair… my heart says yes (they can do it again) and my cricketing brain says no. It looks like India has more chances, but again in one-day cricket, you don’t need big names, but big commitment that very day”

The veteran, however, is very confidence about India beating Pakistan in the Champions Trophy. Both teams will start their campaign playing against each other on June 4 at Edgbaston.

“In the 1980s Pakistan team was better, it beat us more times; but in the last 15 years, the Indian team has become better. Pakistan has nothing to lose at this stage. It has everything to gain.”

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