Kapil Dev’s 175* Is Not The Greatest One-Day Hundred

Pathbreaking, yes, but to deem an invisible knock the greatest is to sell our cricketing education short for a myth.

Kent’s blooming Nevil Ground at Tunbridge Wells would adorn its proudest sheen while its pink Daffodils decorated the backdrop with a glee, the game’s history was etching their beauty in its eyes as Kapil Dev stood tall on another delivery and presumably thumped it past mid-on for a boundary to complete one of cricket’s most iconic and legendary images.

Embellished through the power of words and imagination, the stroke and the image it defines has remarkably transcended eras and generations, expressing reverence for the meaning and glory of an invisible knock that none outside the few thousands present at the ground that day have witnessed. Kapil struck 16 fours and 6 sixes on a pivotal afternoon, but no other available glimpse of his pathbreaking act would capture its essence and the man’s valour and extravagance as perfectly as this photograph from Trevor Jones did.

That Kapil Dev’s 175* transformed not just India’s fortunes at the Prudential Cup but also changed the game of cricket is visible to us today. Staring at an imminent defeat at 5 for 17, with a third straight loss set to quash their gratuitous World Cup dream, his onslaught stormed India past gruesome hurdles and improbabilities attached with his team’s campaign while also paving way to a paradigm shift that Indian cricket has undergone since.

Kapil’s spirited juggernaut, featuring the gritty Mohinder Amarnath and Yashpal Sharma and the incisive Roger Binny and Madan Lal, and their ultimate triumph inspired a generation of cricketers, including the era’s poster boy Sachin Tendulkar, whose rise into prominence as the world’s finest coincided with an economical boom that our nation had long craved for, in the same years that the television expanded its wings past ‘Doordarshan’, took the game to the nooks and corners of the vast geographical land, brought in huge sponsorship and broadcast rights money and most importantly, caught the imagination of the next generation that grew up idolizing him and wanting to be the next ‘Tendulkar’.

That Tendulkar would join shoulders with the generation of Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Zaheer and Dhoni to win the 2011 World Cup would be testament to not just his excellence and timeless nature but also his imprints in the minds and hearts of those who admired and adored him and eventually played with him. Without Tendulkar, there would be no Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, for whom their greatest and most inspiring memories watching the game had the Master excelling home and away wearing an India shirt. It’s a domino effect evident in the rise of Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal, who would’ve grown up admiring, adoring and idolizing Rohit and Kohli.

That Indian cricket has entered this loop of talented men wanting to follow the footsteps of the generation that inspired them began on a more emphatic scale with the courageous Sunil Gavaskar fighting every ounce of his resolves to keep India competitive in Test cricket and the inimitable Haryana Hurricane proudly lifting that trophy at Lord’s. “Paaji aap woh Cup na uthate toh hum cricket na khelte,” Aakash Chopra once said. It was conceptualized well before but the IPL would’ve ceased to have its grandest launch and become one of the richest sporting entities thereafter without Dhoni’s ‘Youngistaan’ leading the march and India winning the 2007 T20 World Cup, which itself wouldn’t have happened without the victory in 1983.

The BCCI may not invite him today to their annual awards ceremony but the board’s egoistic rich men shall remember that the voice of influence and financial flex they enjoy today in cricket globally wouldn’t have existed without Kapil’s innings sending Indian cricket down that path and completely altering the game’s power bases. People like us wouldn’t have a living to make out of this great sport without him. It’s something I’ll always be grateful to Paaji for.

But as true as that is, the euphoria and nostalgia surrounding the great man’s knock and its wider impact alone have tended to overdrive its tale and the narrative. Very little is spoken about the knock itself. Yes, the known context underlines it as one of the most exceptional hundreds, for it helped India overcome a near fatal collapse in a virtual World Cup knock-out game after walking in the deepest of strife as captain. But we certainly need to rationally revisit the ‘greatest One-Day hundred’ status accorded to it and provide, for once, an honest assessment whether it is justified to put this knock on that pedestal without being swayed by the the impact, the legacy and the emotions attached to it.

No, this is not to take the word-play too seriously, but to demand the just description in respect of an innings. Not an act of denigrating or disrespecting a knock but to judge the definition it’s provided. When we call an individual performance the ‘greatest’, the meaning and the substance of the performance alone should stand-out even if it didn’t attract the euphoria and seismic impact associated with it. If Kapil Dev played one such innings, it should still be the ‘greatest’ even if India had lost that day and never won the World Cup. It shouldn’t sit right with us that four generations of cricket lovers have religiously uphold an innings as the greatest in the history of One-Day Internationals without having seen it.

When Chris Gayle pulled off the ‘Gaylestorm’ against Pune Warriors at the M Chinnaswamy and blasted them for 175, the attack the West Indian smashed had Bhuvneshwar Kumar and nothing else to withstand the assault he unleashed at them on a ground with one of the flattest pitches and tiniest of dimensions. Bhuvneshwar even conceded just 0/23 off his 4 overs, underlining how Gayle feasted off the rest of the cast. It isn’t that Gayle couldn’t have hit 175 against a quality attack in his pomp, but I’m not questioning the player here, it’s the judgement passed on an innings hailed by many as the greatest IPL innings played.

Surely, Gayle would’ve hit a better two-end challenge in the IPL for a less intimidating score and the league’s 16-year-old reign has had other milestones achieved against attacks of greater quality and depth. Maybe it’s the enormity of 175, but there’s a chance someone somewhere someday might reach 200 in a T20 facing the worst possible attack. Would we rate it as the greatest T20 innings ever? No. Because at some point after the frenzy surrounding that knock is over, cricketing wisdom would allow us to overcome the magnitude of the achievement and apply that filter.

It’s also psychological. When a Harsha Bhogle on air paints the image of a knock, consciously or subconsciously, those words get drilled in our head and we use them subsequently in our cricketing discussions and debates to reaffirm a belief that, without us realising, someone else has chosen for us. And that’s a problem. Bhogle could just be doing his job of being the greatest storyteller and amplifying a moment. But words have an impact. They aren’t supposed to be misplaced and weightless, they should be precise and strong. When they’re not, they give birth to misconceptions and myths.

Myths, seeped and sustained in the human mind shape into beliefs. When scripted, they turn into mythology. Without us recognising, the documentation and the word of mouth have psychologically conditioned us into forming an unquestioned belief where Kapil Dev’s knock holds an unmatched presence. We’ve allowed the innings’ legacy to overpower our thoughts and triumph our knowledge and understanding of the game, which should’ve allowed us to judge the knock alone, independent of what came before and afterwards. The previous generation was perhaps handicapped to this means, they weren’t as blessed as we are with the rise of analysis and statistical machinery. And that only makes it necessary that we must not sell our evolving minds and cricketing education short in support of myths. The power of imagination drove the older generation. We should be immune from that and not lose sight to substance.

And nothing ascribes true substance to an individual knock than the quality of the bowling attack it is played against. Eight different bowling attacks participated in that World Cup at the height of the English summer, where conditions for 60-over red-ball ODIs played without floodlights in early morning starts accentuated the bowler’s advantage. Yet, Zimbabwe emerged as the worst of the bowling units, averaging 45.20 while going for 4.21 an over and losing five of their six matches. Zimbabwe’s only win of the tournament, by 13 runs against Australia, required a magnum opus allround performance from Duncan Fletcher, who scored 69* and bagged 4 for 42.

The attack that faced Kapil’s wrath involved Peter Rawson, Kevin Curran, Iain Butchart, John Traicos apart from Fletcher. Rawson averaged 35.58 with the ball for his 10 ODI wickets, Curran’s nine came at 44.22. Butchart took 12 at 53.33 and Traicos 19 at 51.94. Fletcher was the only one who averaged below 35. They all bowled their quota of 12 overs that day. It was a bowling unit shaped in skill through experience of playing first-class cricket in South Africa, Zimbabwe and England, where they learnt to extract prodigious early swing and seam movement at medium pace. The ability to retain steam once the new-ball wears off and the pitch eased was presumably not their forte. That Zimbabwe lost a game where their batting unit and the surface allowed them to reach as deep as 235 in response to India’s hefty 266/8 only underlined the limitations of their attack.

To apply cricketing wisdom to the unseen and invisible, the Tunbridge Wells game had an inexperienced, underdeveloped attack with five equally raw and brittle bowlers showcasing the best and the worst of itself. Fletcher & co ran through the first half of Indian batting line-up on a moist English county surface but fell flat once the conditions eased and couldn’t comeback on their feet in the face of Kapil’s onslaught. His aggressive game destroyed their lengths and plans, a scenario typifying fortunes of all shallow attacks when confronted with a counterattacking knock played by a batter capable of consistently blazing it away. Because such bowling units have a very limited skill-bank to call upon when put under the pump, they tend to allow teams to recover from collapses. It was only easier in that era where hard lengths, speed variations and defensive bowling were no concepts. Why, attacks today don’t usually allow such counterattacks to flourish and extend too long.

When it happens occasionally in this age, you get a Glenn Maxwell hammering 201* off 128 in a chase of 293 against Afghanistan in a league stage World Cup encounter that Afghanistan had no business losing when they had put the Australians on the mat at 91/7. Maxwell fought immense physical strain in his superhuman effort to lit-up the Wankhede and saved Australia from an embarrassing defeat against a nation they conveniently refuse playing outside such events. The euphoria that followed Maxwell’s standalone knock was similar to the one Kapil’s unaided innings inspired. The next best score on either instance was 24.

The word on social media was that it was the greatest innings played, which again laid bare our fallacies as viewers. It was still Afghanistan against whom the knock came and when attacked, Afghanistan reacted like Afghanistan’s inexperience and level of control allowed them to. As the match went deep, excess dew which the Wankhede is renowned for suppressed the threat posed by Rashid Khan and fellow skillful Afghan spinners. And none of the Afghanistan pacers had it in them to stop Maxwell in beast mode at the death, routinely giving him enough room and space to free those hands and dispatch the ball to the boundary when they needed to cramp his aching body, which, Maxwell would be aware, an attack of greater depth and resourcefulness would’ve.

Apart from the glittery they extract from the commentary box, ‘situations’ tend to act as another factor that blur our judgement and fault our description of such knocks. The situation in which Maxwell’s innings arrived was extremely tough, and yes, that would establish it as a great knock, a once-in-a-career innings probably. But we’re using the word ‘greatest’ here and that is misplaced. A great knock maybe great in itself because of the situation, the circumstances it came in, but equally, not be the greatest. How do you determine that a performance is beyond great? By putting it through an ultimate filter. And what’s the ultimate filter? The bowling quality. As Zimbabwe did, an attack maybe capable of putting you into a situation, but at the same time might not have the depth of skill to close the door on you as a batting side. Afghanistan is one such attack at this stage of their development. It’s why they regularly lose close encounters.

Former Pakistan allrounder Abdul Razzaq once played protagonist to one of the modern era’s finest counterattacking and game transforming acts. Chasing an imposing target of 287, Pakistan found themselves reeling at 5/136 in the 30th over when Razzaq walked in and blazed a tremendous unbeaten hundred in just 72 deliveries and propelled his team home with one ball remaining. Razzaq’s knock may not have been as standalone a knock as Maxwell’s, for 40s from Fawad Alam and Shahid Afridi had also kept Pakistan’s boat afloat, but the South African attack he dispatched to all parts on a dry Abu Dhabi pitch where chasing wasn’t easy included Langeveldt, Tsotsobe, the Morkel brothers, Johan Botha and Robin Petersen. An attack that may not be categorized as great but one of significantly better overall depth and experience than the one Afghanistan fielded to Maxwell. Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi are easily greater spinners, but they don’t make-up a bowling unit. And runs at the international stage aren’t made versus the best bowlers of an attack, but against those who are not.

Why don’t we celebrate Razzaq’s knock more then? Is it because it didn’t arrive in a major ICC tournament, with no live television broadcast of exceptional global scale and commentators unable catch our attention and accentuate every glimpse of the knock in our conscience to the same degree in a bilateral One-Dayer. Why don’t we hail it as the greatest innings we’ve seen. The pressure of a World Cup game is certainly different, yes, but that pressure is a resultant of what as fans we view as more worthy of our screen time and in-stadia presence. And clearly, as fans we allow the magnitude of the setting to determine the status of a knock in our headspace more than the quality and excellence of the knock itself. It’s only human to fall for the glorified, and not what’s glorious regardless of the backdrop.

If Maxwell had played his innings in a regular bilateral game, it would still have been as special an effort but wouldn’t have been remembered after few weeks. Neither would Kapil’s knock attain such epic and mythical proportions if it were achieved in a five-match series. Even if the opposition was a dominant West Indies side, not a woeful Zimbabwean attack. Not to put a World Cup and a bilateral series on an equal footing, but one of the biggest misconceptions about bilateral cricket is that it is free of pressure because of the lack of wider context to matches. When, to think of it, a five-match series would only give a quality opposition more time to expose and exploit your weaknesses. Why, Test cricket may have an odd upset but invariably the better side wins the series. Bazball may have enjoyed its moment in Hyderabad but eventually fell flat on its face to Ashwin, Bumrah and Kuldeep.

That’s cricketing logic. If anything, Maxwell played his innings against an Afghanistan attack of greater nous and verse of modern-day limited-overs bowling than Kapil did versus a Zimbabwean attack whose circumstances didn’t allow them to build those skills. They both played their knocks against attacks one can’t put in the top notch bracket. Several other batters in the past four decades of international cricket have played their best ODI knocks against attacks one can put in the top notch bracket. It is not contrarian, nitpicking or harsh to suggest that your greatest One-Day hundred maybe among them. It is entirely possible also that your greatest One-Day knock may not even be a hundred.

But that’s a futile exercise to go through, for nothing happens in cricket in isolation and every innings is a byproduct of as much the player’s ability as it is of the circumstances that enable it. I only took this pain because unlike those innings, Kapil Dev’s innings does get implied by many as the greatest there has been without anyone having seen it. What’s invisible can be mysterious, interesting and celebrated but to devote ourselves to face value of anything is to limit and confine the greatest gift the life has given us: a functioning brain with the capacity to question and reason. Each demonic power that has existed, risen and prevailed took its birth from delusion and irrationality. It took truth to eradicate them. Belief, if channelised well, can be liberating. But our society would’ve fallen down the path of its own demise if it only had believers and followers, not those who questioned faiths and myths.