YouTube Original Breakfast With Champions (BwC) released a new episode with one of the most respected cricketers in Indian history: Kapil Dev.
During the episode, Dev revealed stories and secrets about his early days, teammates and the upcoming biopic based on him named ’83.
The host, Gaurav Kapur, sat down with the cricketer at The Lodhi hotel, which was coincidently the venue of Dev’s wedding. He recalls fond memories from his wedding days saying that he got married a day after his sister.
This led to tired relatives sleeping during his wedding as he admitted: “I don’t blame them. They had not slept for three days.”
Speaking about his memorable innings of 1983, the former captain said: “That was my day.”
Dev also confessed: “I didn’t even know what happened.” He added that he was showering and that he always jokes saying he “does not even remember if he got the time to take out the soap” when he was called for batting that day.
Interestingly, Dev also mentioned his first encounter with the 15-year-old Sachin Tendulkar where he was asked to bowl for the young batsman.
Dev admitted to having bowled a slightly fast ball to Tendulkar which he shot away beautifully. The former pace-bowler also disclosed that he never thought he would play so much cricket or become the “God of cricket” and that “he still has more talent”.
Talking about his peers and captaincy, Dev declared that the board “should have made [Sunil] Gavaskar the captain” as he was more “mature” and “professional” in Dev’s opinion.
He also revealed Gavaskar’s strictness with himself during his playing years as he used to refuse to go to nightclubs or sit in areas where people are smoking as he believed it would affect his eyesight.
While discussing his early days, the cricketing legend confessed that he started playing cricket because he was not fond of studying. Likewise, he revealed: “I left football because the match would finish in 1.5 to 2 hours and I would have to go back to studying.”
Dev also acknowledged his poor language skills.
He said: “If someone swore at us in English, we wouldn’t understand. We would say ‘oh he’s calling us cute’.”
Lastly, Kapur mentioned the upcoming biopic on Dev for which he claims: “they used to pick up each and everything.” Dev also commended the director and actors for making observations related to his bowling skills, pronunciation and behaviour in general.
You can watch the whole episode here:
BwC releases new episodes every Friday. You can also catch the episode of BwC with Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma here.