T20 World Cup 2021: Indian players prefer franchise cricket over country’s team, says Kapil Dev
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Kapil Dev against the idea of Split Captaincy between Rohit and Virat. Former all-rounder shared his thoughts on the recent debate on the split captaincy. Kapil Dev against the idea of Split Captaincy between Rohit and Virat.

“A Multi-National Company can not have two CEOs,” said the veteran cricketer. The former all-rounder made his stance clear on the ranging debate over split captaincy between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

The debate erupted soon after Mumbai Indians skipper, Rohit Sharma lifted the 5th Indian Premier League (IPL) title. With many cricket pundits backing the idea of split captaincy while some are against it. Experts say that Team India should hand over at least T20 leadership to the IPL’s most successful captain Rohit Sharma.

Kapil Dev on Split Captaincy:

“It would not turn out well in our culture. A company can have two CEO? No. If Virat is playing T20 format and he is doing well enough for the side. Let it be. Even though I would love to watch people coming out, but it is pretty difficult,” Kapil dev in leadership summit.

“Team India’s almost 70-80% team is same across all the formats of cricket. Players do not like to have captains with different theories. It might create differences between the players who look up to the captain,” Dev added.

“If you implement split captaincy, players will change their behavior. They might think, he is going to be my test captain, I will not annoy him”.

Kapil Dev on Pacers of modern time:

The 61 years old world cup winning captain says pacers opting for too many variations saddens him.

“I am not happy with the pacers of present times. You cannot opt to bowl a cross-seam delivery in the first ball of the over. Players in IPL 2020 realized that moving ball is more important than variations. Sandeep Sharma was much difficult to read in 120 kmph due to the swing he was getting.”

“You cannot run from the art of swing. They need to understand it is not variations or pace, it is swing. Sunrisers Hyderabad, T Natarajan was my hero in the Indian Premier League 2020. He bowled too many yorkers and was fearless in his approach.”

“Keep your wrist straight and hold the ball up for the swing. If your ball swings test match becomes more important. Wasim, Botham, Willis, Hadlee, McGrath look how good they were.”

“The art of swinging ball should come back to the cricket. If you know lots of variations, knuckleball but you don’t know the swing, it is totally waste,” the 61-year-old said.

“Look at Mohd. Shami and Jasprit Bumrah. As a cricketer, it gives me immense happiness that we depend a lot on fast bowlers. Our bowlers are capable of taking 20 wickets in a match.”

“We also appealed to the International Cricket Council (ICC) about the test cricket. These days franchise and T20 cricket taking over test cricket. If test cricket dies, I would say ICC has done the worst thing.”

The veteran also added, whoever wins the upcoming India-Australia test series should go on to win the ICC World Test Championship title.

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