Batting from memory

This past Sunday, my niece, all of 17 and a week away from her first day in college, came over. I took her for lunch to a neighbourhood restaurant and as we ordered I found her watching the television set behind my back. A news channel was on, and a feature on the Prudential Cup of 1983 was being telecast.

“What’re you watching so quizzically?” I asked. “It’s Kapil Dev,” she said, “I wonder what he’s doing on television.” “It’s the 25th anniversary of the World Cup victory. It’s probably a silver jubilee special.” “Twenty fifth?” she rolled her eyes, “who cares ...”

I stared back, smiled what I thought was a wry smile and tucked into my chicken tikka masala. It was not that I had nothing too say; it was that I had too much. The welter of emotions that June 25, 1983, triggers within me – or, indeed, a few million others of my generation, give or take some years – is too personal and too complex to adequately convey to someone much younger or from another country or culture. At lunch on Sunday, my niece was another country.

In a sense you have to be English to fully understand what the 1966 World Cup meant for your society. For that matter, you have to be Pakistani to fully appreciate what the 1992 cricket World Cup victory stood for. It would help, of course, if you’d been around to watch those games, or just experience them on radio or television.

I was 14 that summer, and on June 25 my parents dragged me to the engagement of a close family friend’s daughter. It was a quiet, private party – about 30-40 people in an apartment. It was soon apparent that everybody’s mind was elsewhere. The engagement date had been fixed months earlier, well before anybody knew how the Prudential Cup would turn out.

Yet, as it happened, it now coincided with the Big Day. I’d seen most the Indian innings at home, but as the party picked up pace, India began to pick up wickets. The couple was urged to exchange rings double quick, chairs and sofas were moved around, and the party crowded before one small television. Even dinner – an elaborate spread it was, since the girl’s father owned a swish restaurant – was served in between overs, right by the television.

To cut a long story short, the party ended early, and everybody drove home manically to catch the last few wickets, and announce victory. It often struck me in later years that few actually wanted to stay back and watch the whole match at the party venue itself. As victory moved from possibility to probability, people began to reach for their car keys.

It was if they wanted to be in their individual homes when the magic moment arrived. I suppose you can party anywhere, but you have to be home for Diwali, or Christmas or Id. June 25, 1983, was a day vested in sacredness.

For me, the moment was particularly and doubly sweet because justice had been done. Mohinder Amarnath was my favourite cricketer, a boyhood hero who I thought had been treated unfairly by the selectors and the Bombay lobby that then ruled Indian cricket – it still does, but that’s another story. The Prudential Cup completed a dream comeback for him. He’d stood up to Imran Khan in the winter of 1982-93 as all around him crumbled; he had hooked and hit his way to runs and glory against the West Indies – India’s only series in the Caribbean while facing the pace quartet – earlier in the year; and he had made the World Cup his own.

I guess it’s not just age that causes me to remember 1983 more than other years, other victories. Adelaide in 2004 and Perth earlier this year; the Test series triumph in that remarkable tour of Pakistan in 2004; the brilliant burst that took India, after a faltering start, to the 2003 World Cup final – there has been much to cherish in recent years.

Having said that, the 1983 moment still stands out, simply because it was, for that period, so unusual. India rarely won anything significant those days. In the immediate past, we’d beaten West Indies, Australia and England at home, but all of them were second-rate sides, without the Packer players or some top star or the other. The victory against Pakistan in 1979-80 was memorable but came, except for the final two Tests, in the absence of Imran Khan. Imran himself showed up India’s batting as sub-prime in the 1982-83 series.

That was a time when the average, reasonably informed cricket fan could recount which Indians had scored centuries at Lord’s and newspaper writers still saw that, for some reason, as a pinnacle of achievement. Today, even Ajit Agarkar has scored a century at Lord’s.

The 1983 team was not India’s best ever. I would argue that the 2003 World Cup finalist XI had a better batting line-up and, with the exception of Kapil – who I would happily have had for the then tyro Zaheer Khan – a better bowling attack as well.

Yet, the XI Good Men of 1983 were honest cricketers. They had what illustrious predecessors and successors have sometimes lacked – pluck, grit and courage. Kapil hit 175 not out coming in at 9 for 4. Don’t forget, Roger Binny, Madan Lal and Syed Kirmani supported him at the other end for close to 250 runs. Yashpal Sharma and Amarnath were not history’s most elegant batsmen – but I’d want them on my side at Armageddon.

In many ways, the fact that Twenty20 and IPL have taken over cricket in 2008 has completed a circle that began with the Prudential Cup. Starting 1983, the limited-overs game – F50, to use today’s argot – was recognised as one for bits-and-pieces cricketers: those who could bat a bit, bowl a bit, chase the ball hard in the outfield. Madan Lal and Binny were never going to be Test match greats but they were invaluable in an ODI.

Twenty20 has inverted the pyramid. It’s brought back the specialist. Only an outstanding bowler – Glenn McGrath comes to mind – can restrict runs or even hope to bowl a maiden over in this format. As for front-ranking batsmen, they have a huge role coming in at the top of the order. The middle or late order is not always as important in a Twenty20 game – for the most part, either your first four batsmen win the match for you or you lose.

In 1983, it was so different. The mouse roared, the little man punched above his weight. On a Sunday evening 25 years ago, we were all kings for the rest of the night.