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Kapil to get BCCI lifetime achievement award
Kapil Dev, the former India captain, will receive the BCCI's CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award for 2013, marking a full return to the official fold after several years out in the cold. He will become the 21st recipient of the award, which was first conferred on Lala Amarnath in 1994.
Kapil's India career spanned 16 years between 1978 and 1994, and included 131 Tests and 225 ODIs. While his high point was leading India to their first World Cup win in 1983, he notched up several other records. He was the first cricketer to complete the double of 5000 runs and 400 wickets in Tests, and his final Test-wicket tally of 434 remained a world record for years.
Following his retirement, Kapil coached the Indian team in 1999-00 and was chairman of the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore in 2006-07.
Kapil, however, was involved in a long and bitter battle with the BCCI that began in 2007 with the birth of the now defunct ICL in the aftermath of India's disastrous show in the World Cup in West Indies. The ICL, which preempted BCCI's IPL, was soon declared unofficial and unlawful, and the players associated with it barred from taking part in any cricket locally and, eventually, globally. Kapil, the head of the ICL, was sacked from his position as the NCA chairman and there followed a series of events, court cases and failed negotiations that led to the ICL's closure.
Kapil spent the next five years on the margins of the game as a television talking head and newspaper columnist. However, he held centre stage at the official silver jubilee celebration of India's 1983 World Cup win and, two years later, was inducted into the ICC's Hall of Fame.
In April 2008 the BCCI announced an amnesty scheme for all involved with the ICL, with a May 31 deadline to cut off all ties with the rebel league. In June 2009, it announced an amnesty for 79 players, 11 former players and 11 officials. Kapil Dev was left out of that list.
In May 2012, the BCCI announced a one-time benefit payment for former national and domestic cricketers but added that Kapil was not eligible because of his association with the ICL. "Not all cricketers are answerable to the board," Kapil had said after his name was excluded from the list.
However, once Kapil cut off his ties with the ICL in July 2012, he was welcomed back into the BCCI fold and became eligible for the Rs 1.5 crore (approx. $242,000) benefit. "The BCCI is like a parent and we are like its children," Kapil had said then. "I have contributed to the welfare of cricket and cricketers during my earlier association [with the BCCI] and aim to do so even now."
