by Anjan Roy

Created on: June 24, 2009   Last Updated: July 02, 2009

I was about ten years old. It was around 2am in the morning. I had gone to bed a little after midnight after the world cup final between India and West Indies got interrupted due to technical problems. I got up with some big noise coming from the neighboring streets. I was hearing some indistinct voices. When I walked up to the window I was hearing chants that "India won the world cup...!". I was pleasantly surprised and delighted, because when I left the TV set, we were all out for 183 and West Indies was batting comfortably towards victory. I went up to my Dad and asked him details, and he told me how Kapil Dev took one of the all time greatest catches, and how Mohinder Amarnath, with his military medium pacers, took 3 vital wickets.

I did not sleep the rest of the night eagerly waiting for the morning newspaper and read the details of every West Indies wicket.

It all started about 3 months before, when we first defeated West Indies on their soil. That was the first time we started to think that we could also defeat the world champions. We had a team blended with seniors like Gavaskar, Amarnath and Kirmani at the same time we had juniors like Srikanth, Ravi Shastri and Balwinder Sandhu lead by a young and energetic Kapil Dev. However, our consistency and experience was always questioned as we had never passed the group stage in the last two versions of the world cup.

When the world cup started in May, we defeated the West Indies in the first match. That was the time, when people started to think, there might be an upset on the cards. After the first round of group stage, we had defeated West Indies and Zimbabwe and lost only to Australia. In the second round of group stage, we lost to West Indies, but defeated Zimbabwe after one of the greatest turn-around performances by Kapil Dev. In the last group match, it was between Australia and India and the winner went onto the Semi finals as the number two on their group. India, batting first, scored a modest 247 in 55 overs. When we came to bowl, our bowlers bowled their hearts out with Roger Binny and Madan Lal on fire. Madan Lal took 4 for 20 in 8 overs and Australia was bundled for a modest 129 in less than 40 overs. That match was followed by the semi finals with England, with India defeating England comfortably with 6 wickets. The rest of the story is history about the finals.

I think the 1983 victory is a clear example to us that shows us that if you believe in yourself, nothing is impossible. Our young team was confident and had a belief in itself that we could make history.

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