Straight from the Heart - Kapil Dev Autobiography I hope who ever reads this article have heard about Kapil Dev!!! If not, it will be difficult to fathom my view. The whole book as the title suggests is Straight from Kapil’s Heart. The book is GOOD. It could have been better If there was more about Cricket related incidents.
The publishers are very bad, because they have spelled ’’Jhonty Rhodes’’ as ’’Jaunty Rhodes’’. Similarly, there are few more mistakes in the book which I don’t remember... He explains his childhood days, his love life with Romi(his wife), his playing days, Golf and last but not the least ’’MATCH FIXING’’ issue. You may feel you are reading some Hindi romantic movie script sometimes when it comes to his lovelife and marriage ceremony. He has written about the relationship between him and Sunil Gavaskar.
He explains how few journalists simply madeup the stories that there was problems between Kapil & Sunil. He hasn’t written much about other international cricketers which is somewhat disappointing, atleast for me. Finally about the MATCH FIXING issue: First of all, I NEVER doubted that Kapil was involved in Match fixing, So when I read the book I learnt how his name was involved, how he felt about the whole issue, what he felt and feels about Manoj Prabhakar & others... He has explained how his name was brought in to the Issue.
After reading this book, I really HATE Shobha De and Vinod Mehta(Outlook editor-in-chief). I have stopped reading any article written by both of them. It is hard to believe that Outlook asked Manoj Prabhakar to name some Indian cricketer before publishing the article. During the MATCH FIXING episode Kapil mentions that in some stupid article Shobha De has written about the MATCH FIXING and something like ’’She never invites cricketers to her party’’. ’’How can She deduce that all cricketers are involved?’’ is what Kapil wants to know. You feel sorry for Kapil when you read things like this.
Excerpt from his book - one of the journalist who was waiting outside his gate when his house was raided by CBI asked Kapil’s daughter when she returned from school ’’where her father had kept the money?’’. ’’Is it the kind of question you ask a child?’’ Coming to Vinod Mehta, who was shouting that they were the people who brought the whole MATCH FIXING issue has stopped writing articles about it when CBI said that Manoj Prabhakar was himself involved. He has written about his feelings when he cried in Hardtalk episode with Karan Thapar on BBC.
I felt very bad when I heard that recently Shekar Suman was immitating. We will NEVER know how much mental agony Kapil must of have had during that time. It is not something that you can explain in words.
Looking back everybody says that he shouldn’t have cried, but he says at that time he was very emotional. He has written about his world cup 83 victory, 4 consecutive sixers against England, Sachin Tendulkar, Azharuddin, and others... I quite enjoyed reading the book, so I wish you might aswell do...