World Cup winning former Indian captain Kapil Dev has tipped Sri Lanka to win next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup in New Zealand and Australia. The former great was part of a discussion that India Today hosted titled ‘”Seven Wonders: All World Cup Winning Captains on One Platform”.
The former all-rounder, who led India to World Cup glory with a shock win in the final against the mighty West Indies in 1983 had high praise for the Sri Lankan cricket team. “I get the feeling that Sri Lanka and Australia are the favourites to win the 2015 World Cup apart from India. New Zealand, I would say are the dark horses.”
Kapil believed that West Indian and Australian teams were among the best World Cup winning sides, but praised Sri Lanka the most. He went onto add that no country dominated the sport forever and called Sri Lanka winning the World Cup in 1996 as a great moment in the sport as no one had backed them to do so.
World Cup winning Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga too shared his thoughts. “Cricket went to a different road after we won the World Cup. Every kid wanted to play cricket. No one had expected us to win in 1996, but we had done our homework well. We didn’t have a very strong team, but we had very strong team spirit.”
Ranatunga also spoke about some of the toughest moments during the campaign. “I always wanted to keep my cool, absorb pressure and keep teammates relaxed. We had some great players in the squad and guys like Aravinda de Silva and Sanath Jayasuriya were outstanding all-rounders and allowed us to play the additional batsman which made our batting extremely strong.
