Calcutta: The chairman of National Cricket Academy Kapil Dev, who landed in the city on Thursday, appeared quite angry with wicketkeeper batsman Sreewats Goswami.

Even as Goswami scored a sparkling 75 in his team’s victory in a practice match, he failed to impress India’s lone World Cup-winning captain who was watching.

The iconic allrounder, who later announced the 15-member under-19 East Zone squad for the Inter-Zonal Col. Hemu Adhikari Trophy, had a special word for Goswami.

“I’ll keep an eye on you…,” Kapil told the Bengal boy. Grilling him during a 15-minute interaction with the 25 trainees. “I won’t praise your effort… Why were you so slow in running between the wickets?

“You don’t necessarily score runs only from big hits… I think you missed 12 runs from the few minutes that I saw… This way you can’t aspire to play for India. These small, small things differentiate a great player from a good and an ordinary one,” he said.

Goswami was not the only one, Kapil had tips for everybody — even those who were not picked in the squad. His idea was to instil some josh in the boys.

Having visited the camp twice, the icon revealed his affection for the boys: “Fight… NCA mein naak nahin katwana… josh dikhana (Show your spirit and don’t let me down),” was Kapil’s parting shot.

Earlier, Kapil did spare some time for the frenzied mediapersons. Making it clear that he has joined the newly organised Indian Cricket League for the betterment of cricket, he said: “What do you think? Is it good or bad for cricket?

“If youngsters get a chance to play against a Sachin Tendulkar or a Brian Lara, isn’t it good for the game? Whatever I’m doing is for the betterment of the game… I don’t think there would be any conflict with the BCCI… I’ve not done anything wrong,” he said.

On the first Test in Bangladesh, the former captain felt India could have gone 1-0 up. “Even if it rained, we still could have won that match. We should’ve bowled well and bundled out Bangladesh.”

On the nagging injury problems to key players, Kapil agreed to what captain Rahul Dravid had said the other day.

“In my time we did not play cricket for 10 months. We had enough time to recover from injury. Dravid was right… He’s the captain. He knows best whether the schedules are overcramped,” he said.

EAST ZONE U-19 SQUAD

Ishank Jaggi (captain), Sourav Tiwari, Keshav Kumar, Shabaz Nadeem, Sunny Gupta (all Jharkhand); Rohan Banerjee (vice-captain), Sayan Sekhar Mondal, Sreewats Goswami and Pankaj Shaw (all Bengal); Swarupan Purkayastha, Pritam Das, Abu Nachim Ahmed and Sujay Tarafdar (all Assam); Lagnajit Samal and Alok Sahoo (both Orissa).