The 16th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is currently underway and has reached the halfway stage of the league games. The IPL attracts numerous top-notch players who deliver enthralling performances, keeping their fans on the edge of their seats. Even in the past, the cash-rich league has seen some global cricket icons such as Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, Brett Lee and Rahul Dravid give a dose of entertainment to their fans.
Often this discussion goes around among the cricket fraternity about how the IPL would have impacted the performance of yesteryear stars and players from the past era, such as those from the 70s and 80s. Speaking about the same, Indian cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar recently shared his opinion on three cricketers from his era who he thinks would have thrived in the IPL.
When asked to pick players from his time, Gavaskar went with Kapil Dev, the captain who won the World Cup, as the all-rounder, Sandeep Patil as the batter and BS Chandrashekhar as the bowler.
Gavaskar reckoned Chandrashekhar’s bowling action was more suitable for white-ball cricket, and Patil’s aggressive batting style would have made him an extremely valuable asset in the IPL.
“Look, a batsman I would like to see would be Sandeep Patil, there is only one all-rounder who I would choose – Kapil Dev, for the bowler, I would like to see BS Chandrashekhar play in the T20 format because his bowling action was not suited only for test cricket, but one day cricket and T20 cricket would also be easy for him,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
Kapil played 225 One Day Internationals (ODIs), in which he scored 3783 runs and took 253 wickets. Similarly, Patil appeared in 45 ODIs for India, scoring 1024 runs with an average of 29.24. Chandrashekhar, on the other hand, played 13 ODIs and bagged 16 wickets.
