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[ellawilson]

Four greatest all rounders in cricket have been Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and Ian Botham.  All of them had remarkable skills in batting,bowling and fielding.  Their style was aggressive,brilliant,charming and extraordinary both in batting and bowling.  The similarities among them were,all of them came in the decade of 1970's and were at their peak in the decade of 1980's and they got retired in 90's.  The second similarity was that all of them were fast bowlers and attacking batsman who came to bat at number 6 or 7 postition for their respective teams. 

First of all Ian botham became the hightest wicket taker taking 383 wickets.  Then richard hadlee took the highest wickets by taking his tally to 433 wickets.   Then kapil dev broke its record by taking 434 wickets.  Among them Imran Khan, Kapil dev, Ian Botham also became great captains.  Kapil dev won the world cup for India in 1983 under his Captaincy.  Then went on winning the test series on england soil in 1986 after a gap of many years.  Imran khan also won world cup for his country in 1992 under his captaincy.  He also went on winning the test and One Day Series on Indian soil even though he had raw stuff and fresher players in His side in 1986.  Newzealand team also rose to great heights when Richard Hadlee played.  Ian Botham was the first player to score 5,000 runs and take 300 Test wickets, and the first to score a century and take 10 wickets in the same Test match.  The style of Kapil dev was extraordinary.  who can forget his 175 runs when India were 15/5 against zimbabwe in 1983 world cup and his brillaint innings of century in a tied test match in 1986 against australia,when india had the fear of facing followon and in the end came close to winning it. 

Words are short if we keep on writing their achievements and records.  But one thing is quite sure that people enjoyed watching thier aggressive style both in terms of batting and fielding and stadiums all over world were packed to full whenever they came to play.  Lets hope that history repeats itself when such type of allrounders of great calibre come into existence again in the future years.