Internet Desk: The year 1983 is best remembered in Indian cricket as India became the Champions of the World Cup. ‘Kapil’s Devils’ lifted the trophy in England after defeating the mighty West Indies.
Winning the World Cup would not have been possible without some key reasons. However these reasons would be futile without the 14 member squad of the Indian team. Among these 14 players, 8 of them were medium pacers whose deadly swings matched perfectly with the English bowling conditions and as a result were lethal for the oppositions.
Kapil Dev, Mohinder Amarnath, Yashpal Sharma, Roger Binny and others played in the competitive English county tournaments and as a result they were accustomed to the English pitch conditions.
Now we discuss the main 5 turning points for the Indian success at the 1983 World Cup:
Defeating West Indies in the group stage: Before the start of the world cup India defeated them in a match and this served as a positive boost in the group stages and India began their cup campaign with a win. This registered India’s second victory at World Cup stage as India first won in the 1975 World Cup against East Africa. India failed to win any of their group matches in the 1979 World Cup.
Do-or-Die match before the knockouts: India comprehensively lost to West Indies in their second group leg match by 66 runs and then again badly lost to Australia by 162 runs and thus the Zimbabwe match became a do-or-die match for the Indian team. However the team suffered yet again and was reduced to 17-5. However Kapil Dev’s heroics saved India from the blushes as he went on to score a 138 ball 175* and took the team’s tally to 266. Zimbabwe lost the game after they were all out at 235.
Thrashing Australia: Coming back into the game after being reduced to 17-5 to 266-8, in the previous game, charged up the team which acted as a moral boost helped them defeat Australia by a huge margin of 118 runs. Australia made 129 in return to India’s 247 courtesy of tremendous bowling by Roger Binny and Madan Lal where both picked 4 wickets each.
Win against mighty England: The mighty England had a strong middle order in form of David Gower, Iam Botham, Allan Lamb and Mike Gatting and india restricted them to a mere score of 213 and then strong batting performances from the batsmen saw the team in to the finals.
“We couldn’t differentiate Kirti Azad and Mohinder Amarnath. We thought Amarnath running like a medium pacer and then bowled like a spinner while Kirti Azad being an off break bowler bowled like a medium pacer” said David Gower.
Viv Richards’s famous dismissal: The 83 World Cup final is best remembered for Viv Richards’s famous dismissal.
When I started bowling from the Nursery end from the first over Richards were looking destructive as he hit three boundaries in my first over. After that I bowled 8 overs. In the 7th over of my first spell Kapil wanted to rest me but I insisted on bowling another over and then the historic incident occurred. While attempting a pull shot Richard was caught by Kapil who ran 16 yards to take a stunning catch” said Madan Lal.