Not exactly a denial but former Indian cricket team captain Kapil Dev has “differed” from former teammate Dilip Vengsarkar’s version of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim walking into the dressing room in Sharjah in 1987 and offering Toyota cars to team members.
“Yes, I remember a gentleman walking into our dressing room in a game in Sharjah and wanting to talk to the players,” Kapil Dev told indiatoday.in
“But I asked him to leave the dressing room immediately as outsiders were not allowed. He listened to me and then walked out of the dressing room without saying anything. Later, someone told me he was a smuggler from Bombay and his name was Dawood Ibrahim. Beyond that nothing happened,” he said.
Kapil Dev said he wasn’t aware of Toyota cars being offered to the players. “No such offer came to my knowledge then. If Dilip is saying it now, he would know more than me.”
Vengsarkar’s version of the incident was more or less the same except the offer about the Toyotas.
“Dawood had said: ‘If you guys win the tournament, I will give all of you a Toyota car each. The offer was rejected by the team,” Vengsarkar had said at a function in Jalgaon.
But Kapil Dev cut out the car offer from his story.
It may be recalled that the former BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele had also mentioned the incident in his book, ‘I was There — Memoirs of a Cricket Administrator’.
He had written about the Toyota car offer in a chapter, writing: “If the Indian team becomes champion here, I shall present a Toyota car to each team member, including officials, at their doorsteps in India,” Dawood had told Lele and manager Dyaneshwar Agashe when they went out of the dressing room to meet the unknown (to them) wealthy industrialist in Sharjah.
“As bad luck would have it, India lost the tournament. Australia were declared champions on the basis of a higher run rate, as Australia, England and India earned equal points! After the results were declared most team members were not in tears, but that man was!” wrote Lele.
“After a long gap, we came to know that the man who met us in Sharjah in 1987 was Dawood Ibrahim, the alleged mastermind of the dastardly Mumbai blasts in 1993,” Lele wrote.
“The matter of that contact with us somehow surfaced during police investigations and I was taken aback. When the police interrogated me, I trembled. However, I frankly and matter-of-fact admitted we met, and told them at that time we had naturally no idea about his background or future activities, and did not even know his name. I added that I had met the man there for the first and last time and I had even forgotten the incident. I could not have recognised him thereafter! The police fortunately believed me.”
