Cricket s greatest kapil dev biography

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Alphabetically sorted top ten of players who have played the most matches across formats in the last 12 months

Kapil Dev was the greatest pace bowler India has produced, and their greatest fast-bowling allrounder. If he had played at any other time - not when Imran Khan, Ian Botham and Richard Hadlee were contemporaries - he would surely have been recognised as the best allrounder in the world. In any case he did enough to be voted India's Cricketer of the Century during , ahead of Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar. His greatest feats were to lead India almost jauntily, and by his all-round example, to the World Cup, and to take the world-record aggregate of Test wickets from Hadlee. It was the stamina of the marathon runner that took him finally to wickets and only a yard beyond. He might not have been quite the bowling equal of Imran, Hadlee or Botham at his best, and his strike rate was less than four wickets per Test, but he was still outstanding in his accuracy and ability to sw

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