“Our women’s cricket team is playing very well I think the time has come when we should celebrate our women cricketers, people should look up to them, the way people look up to male cricketers.” said cricket legend Kapil Dev, he was speaking at the programme organised by HCL Foundation for felicitating the winners of fifth edition of the HCL Grant here today.
He recognized the contribution of the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) for the improvement in women’s cricket team “I think the BCCI deserves credit for the improvement in women’s game, they have provided the women’s cricketers all the facilities and opportunities that are required. I would say that women’s cricket is being handled much better than what was the case 15 years back.”
The former Indian all rounder and World Cup winning captain admitted his disappointment at India’s loss at the hands New Zealand in the first test match “They should have performed better as they had played the T20 and ODI series prior to the test series hence should have become accostomed themselves to the conditions. Hence there cannot be any excuse for our players getting to a slow start in the test series. However we have to give full credit to the kiwis for the way they played.”
The Haryana hurricane did not agree with the view that Indian batsmen could not do well in the bouncy tracks of New Zealand in the upcoming tests “have we not won on bouncy pitches of Perth, Melbourne, Durban they(New Zealand) played well and have gone one up we just have to bounce back.”
Dev expressed confidence that the talismanic Virat Kohli would soon recover his form “He is one of the all time great players and great
players have the ability to bounce back stronger. I have no doubt that he has a lot of cricket left in him.”
On the question wheather Mahinder Singh Dhoni should be a part of the Indian squad for the upcoming T20 world Cup he said “As a fan of MSD I always want to see him play. However he hasn’t played for one year, he should play more matches for being included in the team if that is not the case then you are doing injustice to certain players. You can’t have one parameter for one player and another for other players.”
