Sports India

Former India captain Kapil Dev Thursday pulled up the Indian team management in the West Indies for dropping experienced players in the ongoing Test series.

Kapil, India’s only World Cup-winning skipper, was particularly surprised at the omissions of left-arm pacer Irfan Pathan and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh from two of the three Tests played so far in the four-match series.

‘They (management) are supposed to build up the confidence of the players who are not doing well. But they have shattered the confidence,’ he said, referring to India coach Greg Chappell’s remark that Pathan was lacking confidence after he was axed for the first Test in Antigua.

‘I am surprised that an all-rounder of Pathan’s calibre can’t find a place in the team,’ he said on the sidelines of a press conference called to announce a reality cricket show.

‘How come a player like Pathan does not have confidence?’

Kapil, who had 434 Test scalps, said with wicket-keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, also a hard hitting batsman, and Pathan qualifying as all-rounders, the management should pick five bowlers in the XI.

‘When you have two all-rounders in Dhoni and Pathan, you do not need seven batsmen.’

Kapil said he had high expectations from the team when it left for the West Indies for five one-day internationals and four Tests.

‘We thought they would win both the one-day and Test series,’ he said, on the eve of the fourth and final Test to be played at Sabina Park in Kingston, Jamaica.

India surprisingly lost the one-day series 1-4 to Brian Lara’s side but came close to winning the second Test before weather intervened. The Test series is deadlocked 0-0.

Kapil also backed batsman V.V.S. Laxman, who finally came good on the tour with a century and a half-century in the drawn third Test in St. Kitts this week, and leg-spinner Anil Kumble.

He did not rule the two veterans out of the 2007 World Cup to be held in the West Indies, saying that every player ‘wearing white clothes is in the fray’ for the quadrennial tournament.