Why I failed to become Kapil Dev

I could have become the next Kapil Dev.

Back in the day when India was searching for the next Kapil, I was an enthusiastic kid in Class 11 in Delhi. I was also a slow medium-pace batsman and a bowler who could deliver the ball without straightening my arm by more than 15 degrees at the moment of delivery. The moment was there for me to grab with both hands, like Matthew Hayden at slip. All I had to do was improve a bit in the batting, bowling and fielding departments and also floss my teeth till they could signal lost ships with their brilliance, and I could have been India's next Kapil Dev.

Several blokes were attempting to become the next Haryana Hurricane, but most failed to realise, at least metaphorically, that Haryana is about a thousand miles from the coast.

Chetan Sharma was touted as the next Kapil Dev, and he could have become one if the rules of the game had been altered to lengthen that dastardly 22-yard strip to about 28 yards. That would have yorked Miandad for sure.

Laxmi Ratan Shukla also threatened to be the next Kapil, but unfortunately for all us, his threats were more potent than his talent.

For a brief while, the Indian populace was also willing to ignore batting talent altogether and greet Javagal Srinath as the next Kapil. The Chennai cricketing establishment also briefly experimented with LSD and declared Bharat Arun to be the next Kapil. This happened during the heady days when WV Raman was opening the innings for India, and being declared the next David Gower by the slightly more tripped-out among Chennai's cricketing elite. They clearly forgot the second word in the expression "lazy elegance".

I found myself a young, skeletal, raw cricketing maven, at the threshold of success. I could become the next Kapil Dev. But as astute readers will realise, I did not. A search for Krish Ashok in the Cricinfo stats section sadly reveals zero results.

I will now list, for the benefit of all Indian cricket lovers, all the things that prevented me from becoming the next Kapil Dev.

Those evil houses in my neighbourhood, and those mean elderly ungentlemen who confiscated our expensive Cosco cricket tennis balls when a loft over mid-off landed on their pet Labrador sleeping in the compound.

Those slightly less evil houses, like Mr Khanna's fortress, in which any six that landed was considered out, as per the 1992 Concord of East of Kailash. This was our part of the bargain after a heave over square leg broke his dahlia pots.

Those greedy schools that erected yet more concrete prisons on our former cricket grounds (which incidentally were football grounds in the first place; and no non-communist Indian plays football anyway…).

Those nincompoops who hammered the stumps into the ground with gaps large enough to let a Hummer through. So many clean-bowleds I lost to those gaps.

The kids who missed catches off my bowling. If I may paraphrase Sunil Gavaskar, they were not seeing the ball like a football. They were seeing it like a marble.

Those spoilsport mothers and fathers (but mostly mothers) who sent younger siblings as messengers to stop me in my tracks just as I was about to break the bowling record in my colony, to inform me that a failure to come back home and study for my Chemistry exam would result in a (permanent) suspension of night accommodation privileges.

That protein-starved vegetarian diet of mine that gave me arms that could reliably deliver only a tennis ball 22 yards without it needing to bounce more than once before it reached the other end.

That long-standing cold war between my hand and my visual apparatus that causes them to not see eye-to-eye (or hand-in-hand for that matter) and therefore results in a certain lack of coordination.

That lack of luck. If only all of these things that conspire to discourage kids from taking up cricket had taken a bit of a lunch break during my time.

I could have been the next Kapil Dev, but life, the universe and everything else conspired against that dream of mine. Don't let it happen to you.