Chennai :
India’s 1983 World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev feels limited overs skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has a lot of experience and should continue to lead the side as long as he is good enough for the job.
With Kohli doing extremely well as Test captain, there have been whispers from time to time that he should be handed over the captaincy of the limited overs as well.
“I think the answer people should look for is are we ready to ask Dhoni to take a back seat. It is more important. I think if he is good enough he should carry on. When the time will come Dhoni may quit all three formats,” Kapil said.
“But I think at the moment it is very important Dhoni is doing a good job. I think he has enough experience and he should continue.”
Asked to compare Dhoni and Kohli as captains, Kapil said:
“It is too early to answer that and again the two individuals are different and every individual is different. Kohli is very expressive, while Dhoni is calm and quite. I think it is very difficult to compare because both have different teams and different attitude.
“Things have changed. Tomorrow you may ask can you compare these two with Sourav Ganguly as captain. So, every captain brings in his own input and aggression and motivation but it all depends on how you use these things with your team for best results. That is captaincy. It is not that you have to be aggressive and if you are not aggressive still you win the match, it is good enough,” Kapil said.
The former swing bowler heaped praise on Indian seamers, saying they have all improved a lot.
“It is not about 140 plus speed that Indian bowlers achieve but the line and length is very important. If you can bowl 135 speed and get movement, that is good enough. But again, if you have pace, you always get advantage of that,” Kapil said.
“These days the boys work on that. It is good to see that they have the pace. Bhuvneshwar, Ishant, Umesh, Shami all bowl that speed. Fast bowlers have improved a lot,” he added.
India’s fielding coach R Sridhar had said on Friday that the home team should have done better in close in catching. However, Kapil gave a thumbs up to the overall fielding of the home team.
“I think basically the Indian fielding has improved a lot since our time. But still one can understand that all the XI fielders are not the same. They have two or three brilliant fielders in the side,” he said.
“If the majority of the players in a side also improve then the fielding could become better. When you talk about fielding in a team, everyone has to be good enough.”
