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1983 Statistics. From: India Today February 5, 2015

1983

Prudential Cup: venue England

Participating teams: All seven test playing teams (now including Sri Lanka), plus Zimbabwe (selected through the ICC Trophy)

Winners: India, who defeated West Indies in the finals.

India beat Australia to reach '83 semis

gocricket.com 20 Jun 2014

At Chelmsford, Roger Binny's indefatigable spirit was on display in a famous Indian win.

India beat Australia in their final league match of the 1983 World Cup at Chelmsford. It was a do-or-die fixture, and Kapil Dev's team beat the odds to make it to their first World Cup semi-final.

Here's how it panned out:

This was an epic match in the context of India's World Cup dream. Had they lost to Australia here, they would have been ousted on the basis of Australia's better head-to-head record, and so the match at Chelmsford was one of life and death.

Coming to this match, Australia weren't in the best of shape, with their bowling especially suspect, but on this day, they managed to bowl India out for 247 in 55.5 overs. From a poor start (3 for 1), Australia were looking good on 46 for 1 when Roger Binny, in his most outstanding display of an outstanding World Cup, knocked the stuffing out of them.

In three overs, the 16th, the 17th and the 20th, Binny reduced the Aussies to 52 for 4, and the game was over as a contest. Bowling seam-up and hitting all the right places, Binny confounded the opposition with just the right pace on that wicket, and claimed match-winning figures of 8-2-29-4. In many ways, Binny was the epitome of India's spirit that summer, and it was here, at Chelmsford, that his indefatigable spirit was on display.

Kapil Dev: On India's progression in 1983

Kapil Dev India Today February 5, 2015 | We were a champion team, the win was not a fluke

Kapil Dev led India to victory in the 1983 World Cup

I was 24 years old back then. I was also an unusual entity in Indian cricket at the time. For a sport that was still very English and put 'culture' and upbringing above all else, my background was bohemian, to say the least. I was not a natural English speaker, and I came from an agricultural heritage, which made me earthy, rooted, even ruthlessly irreverent, but not 'polished' in the traditional sense.

Indian cricket at the time was in a phase where we were rarely expected to win. In Test matches, a draw was often celebrated as if it was a victory. Our biggest challenge in 1983 was to change that mentality because in one-day cricket there are no draws-you either win or you lose.

Having said that, the Indian team entered that tournament looking to find its way rather than stamp its authority.

A lot has been said about our victory over the world champions West Indies in Berbice, Guyana, in the months leading up to the tournament, and the World Cup opener against them, where we won by 34 runs on the back of a brilliant 89 by Yashpal Sharma. In that match at Old Trafford too, there was a time when the last-wicket partnership of Andy Roberts and Joel Garner had almost taken the game away from us. Chasing 262 for victory, the West Indies went from 157 for nine to 228 before Ravi Shastri got Garner stumped by Syed Kirmani against the run of play. We had done the unthinkable. We'd beaten 'The Invincibles' twice, but were nowhere near being considered among the favourites for the title, and with good reason.

As the next few matches rolled along-a win against Zimbabwe in Leicester, and losses to Australia at Trent Bridge and West Indies at the Oval-it became clear that we may not be a team of superstars, but we were a side where different players were capable of taking on the leading role, with others coming together nicely to support them. If Yashpal stood out in our first game, Madan Lal bowled a fine spell against Zimbabwe, I picked up five wickets against the Aussies, and Mohinder Amarnath struck a polished 80 in our second outing against the West Indies.

We had reached a critical point in our campaign at that stage, with our next game against Zimbabwe in Tunbridge Wells coming up. I remember we had an hour-long team meeting, and that the statisticians had told us we could qualify for the semi-finals even if we lost our last group match against Australia. But we would have to beat Zimbabwe by scoring 311 while batting first. Since we were so unused to winning against the bigger teams, we decided to focus on that target instead of leaving things until the Australia match.

But that was soon to become a distant dream. We were reduced to 6 for 3, then 9 for 4 by the time I went in to bat, and soon to 17 for 5. For a team that scarcely knew how to build an innings in the game's shorter format, it seemed we'd reached the end of the road.

What happened in that game, of course, is history. I managed to get going, reach my 50 with support from Roger Binny, my century with support from Madan, and then went on to score 175 not out with Syed Kirmani standing by my side. As we reached 266 from our 60 overs, and then won comfortably, it was the turning point in the World Cup. Suddenly we felt we could achieve anything. There was a spring in the stride of the Indian team the next morning, and everyone had automatically started practising twice as hard.

It was our rawness that made all of England believe that the semi-final at Old Trafford was going to be a one-sided affair. They were playing at home, they were in fine form, and with a nation's expectations propelling them forward, all the newspaper headlines were predicting a West Indies versus England final. That overconfidence was perhaps their biggest mistake.

I remember the match for its flashes of brilliance-an excellent spell by Roger Binny, the Allan Lamb run out by Yashpal, and that audacious shot where Yashpal left the stumps, ran towards slips, and flicked the ball over the leg-side for a six.

We were happy to go into the final still as the underdogs. In our team meeting, we spoke about how seven hours on the cricket field could change our lives forever. Win or lose, we decided we would play like champions. But when we saw the pitch at Lord's, our old fears started to return. The wicket was so green that you could hardly tell it apart from the ground, and we would have to face Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner on it. For a while, I have to admit, our focus almost shifted from the match to the pitch.

But Krishnamachari Srikkanth began well, settling the nerves by the way he absorbed pressure from the famous pace quartet. His 38 would later turn out to be the highest individual score for either team in the match. A lot has been said about our 'paltry' 183, but I was happy that we had seam bowlers, and not out-and-out fast bowlers in those conditions. Balwinder Singh Sandhu gave us the perfect start, and Madan, Binny and Amarnath all got into the act. I ran backwards to catch Vivian Richards, and Sunny (Sunil) Gavaskar took four catches as we kept a slip right through the innings.

For me, the real danger man was Clive Lloyd. Early in his innings, he got injured on his right leg, and I could see that he wasn't being able to put weight on it. I told Binny that whatever he does, he must not bowl short, and that Lloyd should be compelled to play on his front foot. His delivery was overpitched, and a struggling Lloyd gave me a catch to make it 66 for 5. Soon we would be world champions.

Something incredible happened that afternoon at Lord's. We made history, and also changed the course of Indian cricket forever. A lot of experts said later that the win was a fluke. They may even have got away with it had we not won the World Series in Australia just two years later. No one could say we were not a champion one-day team after that, or that our 1983 victory was just a stroke of luck. And if they do, a lot needs to be said about their knowledge of cricket.

A triumph that changed India

1983 changed Indian cricket, its cricketers and the country forever

Rajdeep Sardesai India Today, February 5, 2015 |

Quite remarkably, India beat England in the semi-final at Old Trafford and suddenly the English seemed to lose interest in the sport.

The West Indians were a mighty side, arguably the greatest of all time. Any side blessed with the majesty of Richards, the power of Greenidge and Lloyd, the artistry of Dujon, and, above all, the sheer pace of the most fearsome attack in cricket history (all four of them!) was simply invincible. Or so most Indians thought. We were going to be runners-up.

In fact, when India was bowled out for just 183, one of its supporters, former Test player Yajurvindra Singh, decided to go off shopping. His brother was to arrive that evening and Singh, a record-holder for most catches in a Test innings, decided it was best to leave before the final act of what seemed a formality. It was perhaps the worst decision he has ever made in his life!

India-50 to one outsiders at the start of the tournament, a team whose previous World Cup record included wins against lowly East Africa and not much else-achieved the seemingly impossible. Kapil Dev lifted the cup that evening, the West Indies were shell-shocked.

Each little shot and wicket only added to the drama. Srikkanth, wielding his bat like a sword, actually hooking a six off Andy Roberts; Sandeep Patil lofting Larry Gomes into a stand where we were surrounded by beer-swigging West Indian supporters; Syed Kirmani diving full length to take a catch; above all, Kapil Dev running like he was at the Haryana marathon and then bursting into the widest smile imaginable after dismissing Sir Viv, who was batting with an imperious air, almost as if he owned the ground and the Cup.

The special moment was when Balwinder Sandhu, a genial sardar, bowled the other great West Indian batsman, Greenidge, while he shouldered arms and left the ball. 'Balloo', as he was fondly referred to, was on the biggest stage of them all, bamboozling one of the finest players of fast bowling. If Sandhu could make the West Indians dance to his swing, then India should have known this was to be an exceptional day.

The 1983 win changed the commercial worth of the Indian cricketer forever. Until then, cricketers rarely did advertisements: a Farokh Engineer in a Brylcreem ad in the 1960s had been an exception.

Yes, Sunil Gavaskar in the 1970s had acquired superstar status but his was the achievement of a middle-class hero: an old-style Test batsman who had defied the fastest bowlers in the world. Gavaskar's world, much like the India of the times, was not one of extravagance or self-indulgence; he was the classicist.

If you ever went to a movie theatre in the 1980s, you couldn't miss Kapil Dev. With his toothy smile and wide moustache, he invited you into a new world that said, quite simply, 'Palmolive da jawaab nahi'. If Gavaskar was the legend, Dev became a pop icon for a young India: suddenly, in the land of spinners, everyone wanted to bowl fast and hit sixes.

1983: Gavaskar, brought luck, not runs

Adapted from

Abhijeet Srivastava |Aaj Tak | New Delhi, January 16, 2015

Kapil scored the most runs in the tournament

Kapil Dev led the Indian team that won the World Cup for the first time in 1983. Against Zimbabwe Kapil played an unbeaten innings of 175 runs. Mohinder Amarnath was the 'Man of the Match’ in the semi-final and final. But the one thing that very few people know is that the team won the World Cup because of Sunil Gavaskar.

Gavaskar had a very poor performance during the tournament. Yet he played for the Indian team in six of the eight matches. After the first two games he was removed from the playing XI. The team won the first two matches but Gavaskar’s performances were quite mediocre: 19 against the West Indies in the first game; and only four runs against Zimbabwe.

The management brought in Dilip Vengasakar in his place. But what happened after that compelled them to bring Gavaskar back to the playing eleven.

In the two matches played after removing Gavaskar, against Australia and the West Indies, India lost both, and by large margins. Gavaskar was recalled. This was the match in which half the team was all out for 17 runs but Kapil Dev scored a historic innings of 175 not out. Gavaskar scored zero runs, but when the team has managed to survive such a grave crisis it seemed to them that Gavaskar had brought luck to the team. He seemed to be a good luck charm in match after match after that. India was not only not eliminated from the tournament, the team did not lose a match after that.

Gavaskar’s own ‘good luck tactic’ during the tournament was to wear his left pad and left shoe first, while dressing for the match.

During the 1983 World Cup, in six matches Gavaskar scored only 59 with an average of just 9.83. His highest score was 25. However, these 25 runs came at the most opportune moment. These runs were scored in the semi-final. The team had to score 214 to win the match. Gavaskar and Srikanth scored 46 runs for the first wicket. This created a strong base for the innings and India reached the final by winning the game by six wickets.

Gavaskar helped the team win the World Cup not because of his performance but because he brought luck to the team.

Kapil Dev's innings

Ayaz Memon India Today February 5, 2015 | World Cup highlights: When the greats got going

1983.

175 runs

138 balls.

4s-16

6s-6

There have been several bigger scores, even double hundreds in the past few years, but to my mind Kapil Dev's unbeaten 175 against Zimbabwe in Tunbridge Wells remains unsurpassed in ODI cricket history.

On a seaming track, India were reeling at 9-4 when he walked out to bat. The score was soon 17-5. From there, to take the total to 266 in the company of tail-enders was an astounding feat.

Look at the hardship quotient for his innings. India faced not just a rout in the match, but also virtual elimination from the tournament. The pitch was heavily loaded in favour of the bowlers too-heavily grassed and a little damp, allowing for deadly seam movement. The manner in which Kapil Dev took these hardships in his stride belied belief. It was the unbridled expression of cricketing genius. Blessed with keen ball sense, nimble footwork and powerful arms, Kapil's counterattack left the Zimbabweans and spectators at the small ground dizzy.

The impact of his innings resonated loud and wide and changed the destiny of not only that match but the tournament as well as the future of the sport. Ironically, this knock was not recorded for posterity because official broadcaster BBC was on strike that day.

Fascinating facts about World Cups

Author: MS Ramakrishnan, Bangalore, Thu, Jan 22 2015 CricBuzz 1 <>CricBuzz 2 <>CricBuzz 3 <>CricBuzz 4 <>CricBuzz 5

1983: Kapil Dev's wife went for shopping thinking India would lose India were given nil chance of upstaging West Indies in the 1983 World Cup final, so much so that Kapil Dev's wife expected defeat and went shopping. Fortunes turned and how!

1983: A shocking revelation from Madan Lal "I was not supposed to bowl the over in which I dismissed Viv Richards," expressed Madan Lal, several years after the 1983 World Cup final. Perhaps, destiny wanted the underdogs to become top dogs.

1983: A World Cup without playing a single game Interestingly, left-arm pacer Sunil Valson became the first player to win a World Cup without even featuring in a single game. Valson was selected in the Indian squad for the 1983 World Cup, but he never got a game in the tournament. Ironically, he was never picked for India again.

See also

World Cup (cricket): history <>World Cup (cricket): 1975 <>World Cup (cricket): 1979 <>World Cup (cricket): 1983 <>World Cup (cricket): 1987 <>World Cup (cricket): 1992 <>World Cup (cricket): 1996 <>World Cup (cricket): 1999 <>World Cup (cricket): 2003 <>World Cup (cricket): 2007 <>World Cup (cricket): 2011 <>World Cup (cricket): 2015