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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Kapil Dev says WI need leader like a Lloyd

by

Vinode Mamchan, in England
2194 days ago
20190711
India cricket legend Indian Kapil Dev, left, West Indies great Clive Lloyd and Guardian Media's Vinode Mamchan, right, call the radio play for the India versus New Zealand ICC World Cup semifinal at Old Trafford, Manchester, yesterday.

India cricket legend Indian Kapil Dev, left, West Indies great Clive Lloyd and Guardian Media's Vinode Mamchan, right, call the radio play for the India versus New Zealand ICC World Cup semifinal at Old Trafford, Manchester, yesterday.

Leg­endary for­mer In­di­an cap­tain Kapil Dev says the West In­dies team has all that it takes to be a good one but needs a charis­mat­ic leader like a Clive Lloyd to bring them to­geth­er. He is sug­gest­ing Lloyd be giv­en a con­sul­tan­cy po­si­tion with the team to be­gin that process.

Dev made the com­ment as he was do­ing com­men­tary on the ICC World Cup se­mi-fi­nal be­tween In­di­an and New Zealand at Old Traf­ford, Man­ches­ter, yes­ter­day, a match the Ki­wis won in stun­ning fash­ion by 18 runs to ad­vance to their sec­ond straight fi­nal.

Af­ter win­ning their open­ing World Cup game against Pak­istan by sev­en wick­ets at Trent Bridge on May 31, skip­per Ja­son Hold­er's West In­dies went win­less in their next sev­en match­es be­fore win­ning their last game against Afghanistan to fin­ish ninth among 10 teams in the tour­na­ment.

The less than flat­ter­ing per­for­mance of the team has led to an avalanche of crit­i­cism from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, who have pin­point­ed the con­tin­u­ing is­sues of play­er se­lec­tion, prepa­ra­tion and the frag­ment­ed Crick­et West In­dies man­age­ment go­ing in­to the tour­na­ment as of the is­sues which must be dealt with if fu­ture teams are to ful­fil their po­ten­tial.

Yes­ter­day, Dev, who fa­mous­ly led In­dia to the World Cup ti­tle against the West In­dies in the 1983 fi­nal, said there is still a lot of hope for the West In­dies team. How­ev­er, he said they need a leader of the cal­i­bre of a Lloyd.

"They look like a re­al­ly promis­ing team but they need some­one who can re­al­ly han­dle them. Prob­a­bly a man like Clive Lloyd who can bring all these young­sters to­geth­er, who are com­ing in," he said.

"I feel a love for West In­dies crick­et and when I looked at their play­ers at this World Cup they were good but I felt they could have done much bet­ter."

Dur­ing his tenure as cap­tain be­tween 1974 and '85, the Guyana-born Lloyd led by ex­am­ple on and off the field and of course led the team to its on­ly two World Cup ti­tles to date in 1975 and '79. While he had play­ers like Viv Richards, Michael Hold­ing, Mal­colm Mar­shall, Desmond Haynes and Gor­don Greenidge in his teams, many ar­gue that it was his abil­i­ty to bring these men to­geth­er to play as a team and his tac­tics that made the ul­ti­mate dif­fer­ence in their suc­cess­ful run for al­most an en­tire decade.

As far as the tal­ent of to­day is con­cerned, Dev said he took a very close look at some of the play­ers on the team and be­lieves there is a core that they can build around mov­ing for­ward.

"Look, they have around three or four re­al­ly good play­ers they could build around at the mo­ment but they need that pres­ence of some­one who can re­al­ly pull them to­geth­er.

"What is ex­cit­ing is that all of a sud­den we are not see­ing five feet six inch­es play­ers com­ing through, we are see­ing six feet five inch­es and they are look­ing strong. That is what we know of West In­dies, it is good to see play­ers like that around.

He added, "I sup­port­ed them at this World Cup and will be sup­port­ing them in four years again."


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