Who Won The First Cricket World Cup – I remember that day only in flashes. A Sony Trinitron color television set in a huge wooden box, father’s mustachioed friend Mukulesh in a bush shirt, his modest wife Shobha in a sari, our new house in Bombay still smelling of fresh paint, my bedroom covered with mosaics, the sound of crickets. comment , the smell of roasted cumin wafting from the kitchen, the clinking of glasses, my parents squealing with delight, the firecrackers going off that Sunday night.
“Remembering things from the past is not necessarily remembering things as they were,” said Marcel Proust. Did that day happen as I remember it, or did I create those memories through multiple retellings? I’m not sure, but my parents can confirm most of the details. I was four years old. It was June 25, 1983 – the day India won the World Cup at Lord’s.
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It was a day that changed Indian cricket, a day that changed India. That changed Sachin Tendulkar. “We celebrated late into the night after getting permission from my parents,” he said. “I was inspired to start playing the [hard] ball game of the season after winning the 1983 World Cup. If that hadn’t happened, things might have been different for me.”
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Years later, I heard about that day. An angry Viv Richards, Kapil Dev running backwards to catch him, Jimmy Amarnath playing Man of the Match and thousands of Indians storming the pitch – these vignettes have been told over and over, embellished with each telling. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a replay of Kapil’s catch, but I could have sworn I was watching it on loop. No father in the 1980s ever got tired of talking to his kids about that magical, uplifting victory. India’s leading magazine at the time – India Today – headlined its cover story: “A Miracle in the Lord: Indian Cricket’s Finest Hour”.
And what a miracle it was. A team only capable of – in captain Kapil’s own words – a “surprise or two”, ran out 50-1 winners to overtake the home of cricket. For a poverty-stricken nation recovering from the throes of emergency and Nehruvian socialism, cricket was less a game and more a metaphor for life. And nowhere was this metaphor more evident than in India’s conflicted relationship with God, with its bases of race, color, class, and colonialism. Lord’s was considered the ultimate bastion of imperialism – a private gentlemen’s club with an emphasis on order and rules and a white, privileged, male outlook on life. To win the World Cup at Lord’s was to triumph over everything it stood for.
Kapil Dev catches Viv Richards during the 1983 Cricket World Cup final and Indian fans celebrate. Photo: Colorsport/Rex
These tensions were evident from the start: when India were to play the first Test, against England in India. Series originally scheduled for 1930–31. it coincided with the outbreak of the Civil Disobedience Movement in India, including the Salt Satyagraha. When Mahatma Gandhi began a march from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to Dandi to protest against Britain’s draconian salt laws – thus “shaking the foundations of the British Empire”, he said – there was outrage in India that a team of English cricket will visit the country. . The tour had to be cut short.
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The two teams finally met two years later, with the All India team – as it was then known – traveling to England to play a Test at Lord’s and a few county matches. “While Gandhi languished in jail, the Indian cricket team was selected to tour England,” writes Ramachandra Guha in The Foreign Field Corner. “It is interesting that two Indians have appeared for their districts against the tourists. Duleepsinhji played for Sussex and Nawab of Pataudi for Worcestershire. Both scorned to feature in All India colours, hoping England would pick them for the winter tour of Australia. Both were selected, although Duleep dropped out due to illness. While India was still ruled by the British, such anomalies were possible. Remarkably, however, neither was asked to play for England against India in the solitary Test of 1932.
As anti-British sentiment ran rampant in India, the Indian and English teams presented to King George V at Lord’s. Jahangir Khan – who took part in the 1932 Lord’s Test – said the Indians felt “a bit nervous because they had never played a Test match and there were so many people shouting”. England won by 158 runs, but not before the Indians created a sensation with three quick wickets on a lively pitch on the first day. England wicketkeeper Les Ames said India’s bowling was up to par but not their batting. Had it been “two very good Indians” – Duleepsinhji and the Nawab of Pataudi – “it could have been, well, a different story in the match”.
Intriguingly, three decades before Duleep and Nawab were not selected, despite being eligible, the MCC decided not to include Duleep’s uncle Ranjitsinhji in the Lord’s Test against Australia during the 1895-96 season. Lord Harris, the MCC president, believed that only “born” cricketers should be selected. “This, depending on how you look at it, is either hypocrisy or plain racism,” Guha writes. “Because Harris himself was born in the West Indies.”
But Ranji was then selected for the Test at Old Trafford because the Lancashire committee wanted him to play (at the time, the host county – or MCC at Lord’s – selected the England team). At the heart of India’s conflict with Lord’s, then, is the colonial baggage that Indians carried, which often led to respect for the tradition of the land and all that it stood for: the desperate desire to see its name honoured, the awe with which it looked. The Long Chamber and – in some cases – their drive to prove their point by avenging empires return.
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For Jack Bannister’s Innings of My Life, Mohammad Azharuddin repeated his 1990 Lord’s Test century – better known for Graham Gooch’s 333 after Azhar was bowled in England. “Before the match,” he writes, “my father called me from Hyderabad and said he wanted me to score a century on that wonderful ground. He always showed an interest in my cricket but was anxious for me to score one at Lord’s.”
This sentiment is expressed again and again. Be it Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid, it is common to hear Indian cricketers talking in hushed tones about how much it means to put on a show there. “I never realized the significance of such a statistic when I first came here as a youngster,” Dravid said after his century at Lord’s in 2011, six months before he retired. “But to miss out on my first hundred at Lord’s all those years ago, it’s stuck with me a little bit.”
Indian fans arrive on the field to celebrate victory over West Indies in the 1983 Cricket World Cup final. Photo: Adrian Murrell/Getty Images
After years of collective disappointment at Lord’s, the 1983 World Cup victory opened the door. After 10 Tests at Lord’s – eight defeats and two draws – India finally managed a win in 1986, only their second in 33 Tests in England. Off the field too, India began to pull its weight, co-hosting the next World Cup in 1987 with Pakistan and taking the final to Lord’s for the first time.
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Amazingly, it was 19 years before India played another limited overs game after the 1983 final. After a league exit during the 2002 Natwest Series – a match India won – came the final against England at Lord’s. Chasing 326, India looked down and out at 146 for five with Virender Sehwag, Ganguly, Dravid and Tendulkar back in the dressing room. But 20-year-old Yuvraj Singh and 21-year-old Mohammad Kaif took them home with two balls to spare. India no longer seemed burdened by their decade-long history of overseas defeats and nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals.
Up in the balcony at Lord’s, Ganguly stripped off his shirt, twirling it in a manic frenzy as he copied Andrew Flintoff’s tricks five months earlier at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai – India’s home ground. India’s attitude at Lord’s seems to have come full circle: from confidence in 1932 to arrogance in 2002. The headline in a Mumbai tabloid on Sunday lunchtime read: “LORDS: In Mecca of cricket, Mohammad works miracles.”
Had India not won that day in 1983, would they have been forced to host the 1987 World Cup? Would Tendulkar be inspired to take up cricket? Would the game explode in the subcontinent? Will Jagmohan Dalmiya become ICC President? Will the epicenter of cricket move from London to Mumbai? The story of cricket, not just Indian cricket, could be very different.
A longer version of this article appeared in issue six of The Nightwatchman, Wisden’s cricket quarterly. Follow The Night Watchman on Twitter On this day in 1983, Kapil
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