That Summer of Kapil's Devilry

Shifting house can by all accounts be a chaotic and rather demanding experience. I have been so caught up in the process that I almost forgot what day it was.

June 25.

Turn back the clock by twenty five years, to this day. And if you still can't remember what I am referring to, you ought to be shot for treason. It is the definitive sepia-tinged moment of our cricketing lives, the day we won the World Cup of cricket.

Please note the "we". It is significant, for on this day, and from this day onwards, an entire nation appropriated the successes achieved by eleven good men. And from this day on, we have (don't know about you, but at least I surely have) lived and died by the achievements of our cricket team.

All of us have indulged in countless discussions about who is the greatest cricketer India has ever produced. We all have our favourites. In my mind there is no doubt that it is Kapil Dev. Anil Kumble may have already taken more wickets than Kapil, and batsmen like Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar would walk into most world elevens of any period, but there is only one Kapil Dev. As Gavaskar once said: "He (Kapil) has scored half as many runs as I have, but more significantly has taken a lot more wickets than I have".

More than the runs he scored or wickets he took, it was the way he played his game, even where he came from. He bowled quick, used his bat like a broadsword, whacking the ball with awesome power, and fielded magnificently. Before Kapil, the bigger players always came from cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata or Chennai.

The arrival of Kapil Dev Nikhanj from Haryana changed all that. He spoke English with an endearing accent, often spoke his mind with the sort of fearlessness he waded into the opposition bowling, and sat on Indian cricket's high table with as much confidence as some of the Maharajas for whom the game was first devised in this land. And in the process, he, more than anyone else, turned the gentleman's game into a national obsession.

By the time the 1983 World Cup was played, I had been watching international cricket for about ten years. My Dad had taken me to Delhi's Feroze Shah Kotla in 1974 when Clive Lloyd's West Indians were touring India. It was a good time to get initiated into cricket for that series proved to be one of the most engrossing Test series of all times.

Until then, that is the summer of 1983, most of the cricket that I had ever watched or followed through newspapers, had a single dominant side -- the all-conquering West Indians. Ever since Lloyd decided in 1975 on a four-pronged pace attack, the West Indians had swept all opposition before them. By 1983, when the third edition of the World Cup began, the West Indians were at the peak of their powers and appeared well-nigh invincible in both forms of the game, Tests as well as one-dayers.

Fearsome as their pace attack was, with Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall, four of the quickest and best fast bowlers to have ever played the game, the batsmen were no pushovers either. Gordon Grenidge and Desmond Haynes opened the batting, you could take your pick who was the more destructive of the two.

The middle order had Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, two of the all-time greats, and in Jeff Dujon the West Indians had a wicket keeper-batsman whose twin capabilities were to be only bettered by the incomparable Adam Gilchrist. I use these names of the past, and their justifiable reputation, only to emphasize just how dominant the West Indian were at that point of time.

In the years that followed India's World Cup triumph in 1983, lot of people have used lot of words to describe that historical moment and what it meant for them.

For me, more than anything else, it meant the end of that aura of invincibility. It also meant we, we Indians, could do anything, it was a defiance of far greater odds than the 66:1 chance that London bookies had given the Indian side to win the World Cup.

As far as I am concerned, Kapil Dev and his men added a hint of a swagger to our steps, to the steps of an entire nation, me included. The magic wrought by eleven men in flannels had touched nearly a billion of us.

I was all of nineteen then, on June 25, 1983. Twenty five years on, pot bellied and bald, that swagger is still intact. All thanks to Kapil's Devils.