First Cricket Match In India – I only remember that day in glimpses. Sony Trinitron color TV encased in a bulky wooden box, my father’s friend Mukulesh with walrus whiskers in his shirt, his modest wife Shobha dressed in a sari, our new home in Bombay still smelling of fresh paint, my mosaic bedroom, the sound of cricket commentary , the smell of roasted cumin wafting from the kitchen, the clinking of glasses, my parents screaming with excitement, the fireworks going off that Sunday night.
“The memory of things past is not necessarily the memory of things as they were,” said Marcel Proust. Did this day happen as I remember it, or did I create these memories through repeated retellings? I’m not sure, but my parents can confirm most of the details. I had four. It was June 25, 1983 – the day India won the World Cup at Lord’s.
First Cricket Match In India
It was a day that changed Indian cricket, a day that changed India. That changed Sachin Tendulkar. “I partied till late at night after getting permission from my parents,” he said. “After winning the World Cup in 1983, I was inspired to start playing with a seasonal (hard) ball. If that hadn’t happened, everything could have been different for me.”
India Draw First Match
Many years later I heard about that day. A furious Viv Richards, Kapil Dev running back to catch him, Jimmy Amarnath playing man-of-the-match and thousands of Indians storming the field – these vignettes have been told over and over, embellished with each narrative. It was years before I saw a replay of Kapil’s catch, but I could have sworn I watched it on loop. No father in the 1980s ever got tired of talking to his kids about this magical, morale-boosting victory. India’s leading newspaper 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”, beating odds of 50-1 to dominate the home of cricket. For a poor nation recovering from the crisis and Nehruian 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, colour, 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 the Indian fans celebrate. Photo: Colorsport/Rex
These tensions were evident right from the start: when India were to play their first Test against England in India. Originally planned for 1930–31, the series 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 – which “shaken the foundations of the British Empire”, as he put it – there was fury in India that the England cricket team would visit the country. They had to cancel the trip.
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Two years later the teams met the All India team – as it was then known – which traveled to England to play a Test, at Lord’s, and several county matches. “While Gandhi was acclimating in prison, the Indian cricket team was selected for the tour of England,” writes Ramachandra Guha in A Corner of a Foreign Field. “Interestingly, two Indians stood up for their districts against the tourists. Duleepsinhji played for Sussex and Nawab of Pataudi played for Worcestershire. Both were rejected to appear in All India colors in the hope that England would select them for this winter’s 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. It should be noted, however, that neither was asked to play for England against India in the solitary Test of 1932.’
With anti-British sentiment running rampant in India, the Indian and English teams presented themselves to King George V at Lord’s. Jahangir Khan – who played in the 1932 Lord’s Test – said the Indians were “a bit nervous because they had never played a Test match before and there were so many people shouting”. England won by 158 runs, but not before the Indians staged an upset with three quick wickets on a spirited first-day pitch. England wicketkeeper Les Ames said India’s bowling was up to standard but not their batting. Had “two very good Indians” – Duleepsinhji and the Nawab of Pataudi – been on the side, “the match could have been a different story.”
Interestingly, three decades before Duleep and Nawab were not selected, despite being eligible, the MCC decided not to include Duleep’s uncle Ranjitsinhji in the Test at Lord’s against Australia in the 1895–96 season. Lord Harris, president of the MCC, believed that only “home-grown” cricketers should be selected. “Depending on how you look at it, it was either gross hypocrisy or outright racism,” writes Guha. “For Harris himself was born in the West Indies.”
But Ranji was then selected for the Test at Old Trafford because the Lancashire board 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 conflicted relationship with Lord is the colonial baggage that Indians had, which often led to respect for the local tradition and all it stood for: a desperate desire to see one’s name on the plaque, an awe, which they heeded to the Long Room and – in some cases – their desire to prove their point by retaliating against an empire that strikes back.
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For Jack Bannister’s Innings of My Life, Mohammad Azharuddin made his century in the 1990 Lord’s Test – better known for Graham Gooch’s 333 after Azhar won the toss and got England in. “Before the match,” he writes, “my father called me from Hyderabad and said he wanted me to score a century on this beautiful ground. He has always shown an interest in my cricket but was very keen to achieve that at Lord’s.”
This sentiment is expressed again and again. Whether it’s Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid, it’s common to hear Indian cricketers talk quietly about how much it means to put on a show there. “I never understood the significance of such statistics when I first came here as a youngster,” Dravid said after his century at Lord’s in 2011, six months before his retirement. “But missing out on my first hundred at Lord’s all those years ago has been a bit with me.”
Indian fans flock to the field to celebrate victory over the 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 losses 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 away, hosting the next World Cup with Pakistan in 1987 and taking the final from Lords for the first time.
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Remarkably, it was 19 years before India played another limited-overs match at this venue after the final in 1983. After a relegation during the Natwest series in 2002 – a match which India won outright – the final came against England at Lord’s. Chasing 326, India lost sight at 146 for five and Virender Sehwag, Ganguly, Dravid and Tendulkar returned to 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 weighed down by a decade-long history of overseas defeats and nine consecutive one-day final losses.
In the Lord’s balcony, Ganguly stripped off his shirt and twirled it in a manic frenzy as he mimicked Andrew Flintoff’s antics at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium – India’s home ground – five months earlier. India’s attitude at Lord’s seems to have come full circle: from disbelief in 1932 to arrogance in 2002. The headline in Mumbai’s Sunday Mid-day tabloid read: “LORDS: In cricket’s Mecca, Mohammad performs miracle.”
Had India not won that day in 1983, would they have attempted to host the World Cup in 1987? Would Tendulkar be inspired to take up cricket? Would the game explode on the subcontinent? Would Jagmohan Dalmiya be ICC President? Would the epicenter of cricket shift from London to Mumbai? The history of cricket, not just Indian cricket, might have been very different.
A longer version of this article appeared in the sixth issue of The Nightwatchman, Wisden’s cricket quarterly. Follow The Nightwatchman on TwitteChattogram: Wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav has registered his