Former India captain Kapil Dev on Thursday backed the selectors' decision to drop senior off-spinner Harbhajan Singh from the squad for the first two ODIs against England next month. "From the point of view of country's interest, nothing is surprising. If they have dropped him, it must be for the betterment of the team," the legendary all-rounder said at the Dilip Sardesai Memorial lecture. "You do get hurt if a spinner of the calibre of Harbhajan is dropped. But if his exclusion is beneficial for the team, then I'm happy. I'm not going to say anything against the selectors." Kapil also supported the move to include young leg- spinner Rahul Sharma in the side on the basis of his performance in the fourth season of the IPL. "IPL is also a part of the country's cricket. Why think of it any other way? IPL/ICL is the way through which we get our cricketers. Without IPL, we wouldn't have got players like the Pathans (Yusuf and Irfan)," he added. To a query, he said there was nothing like "senior players" and only performances should be taken into account while selecting a team. Kapil also took a dig at the Cricket Board for not giving the triumphant Indian squad more time to unwind after their fabulous World Cup triumph on April 2 and for paying much more money to represent their IPL franchises than the country."The players did not get time to unwind and enjoy their World Cup victory. They had worked three years for it. They just got four days (before IPL began). They should have got more time to enjoy the (triumphant) moment," the former India skipper said here.
"If you don't give time to unwind, you lose the passion to play. That's what happened in England (Team lost Test series 4-0 to the hosts). They went through the motion and there was no passion which is very important when you play sports," said Kapil, who delivered the Dilip Sardesai Memorial Lecture at the Cricket Club of India.
"What I saw at Lord's was the worst I have seen. On the second day of a Test series the captain (Mahendra Singh Dhoni) removed his wicket keeping gloves and bowled. He was asking Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar whether they were tired. I would never have let him do that and would have bowled 25 overs on that day. You need to have attitude," he said.
"No cricket should be played for at least a month anywhere in the world after a World Cup," he added. Taking up the debate over club versus country, Kapil said he can never comprehend how players can get more money while representing their clubs (franchises in IPL) than their country. "I got confused here every time. They are run by the same organisation. How can the same organisation (BCCI) give more money to play for club and not for playing for the country? I do not agree with that," he said.
The World Cup winning skipper also criticised the media for giving too much importance to statistics and individual performances without taking into account its impact on the outcome of the match. "You are more keen about Sachin's (Tendulkar) 99 hundreds and not about how we are going to win the next series. I am not saying don't give credit to individual performance, but it should not be more than the country's performance.”
"Everyone knows Sachin has 99 centuries. But how many know that how many of these matches have ended in victories? Everyone knows Sunil Gavaskar has scored 34 Test centuries? But can anyone tell how many matches he has saved for the team? Out of Sachin's 99 hundreds, 60 have ended in victories. If anyone reports that I'll be happy," he said. "We have to change our mindset. If we lose the match what's the use of statistics. To hell with that!," he added.
