World Cup-winning Indian cricket captain Kapil Dev underwent angioplasty on Friday morning at a Delhi hospital after suffering a heart attack. With the news breaking out, many on social media wished the legendary cricketer a speedy recovery.
Dev, 61, was a prolific off-road hitter who made an equal contribution with bat and ball at the peak of his career. He is inspiration for the younger generation probably that is the reason Cricket was mushroomed in india and reached at the peak level. In Test Matches, he had an average score of 31+ per inning in the 5248 runs he did in his international career. In the ODI format, it had run 3,783 runs. In totaHl, he had racked up 9,000 runs in international cricket. He played a total of 131 test matches and 225 ODI.
In Test Matches, he has collected 434 wickets and 253 wickets in the shortest format in the game. It was the first to exceed the 400-site mark in testing.
To his credit, he had done the fastest test in half a century by an Indian at the time with just 33 balls in just his third match and that too against arch rival Pakistan.
However, the most memorable blow of his career came at the 1983 World Cup, when he scored 175 goals in victory and failed to eliminate 138 balls against Zimbabwe. This was a much needed blow as India was down to 17 from the loss of 5 wickets in one stage.
Among his other achievements, he was named Wisden Indian Cricketer of the Century, ahead of Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar.
After his retirement from the game, he had played the role of Indian coach for a short period, but he did not enjoy much success.
Notably, he was retired from the National Cricket Academy in 2004 when he joined the rebellious Indian Cricket League (ICL) in 2007.
He is still in the public eye for his role as a cricket commentator and as a philanthropist.