Before the 1983 World Cup, bookmakers in London offered 66 to 1 against India winning it. The team had won a single match in the two previous tournaments, against East Africa. The West Indies had won both finals, had the fastest bowling attack ever assembled and had, in Vivian Richards, the most frightening batter in the world. When Kapil Dev's side reached Lord's on 25 June, most of the country assumed they were there to make up the numbers.
The road to the final
The campaign had almost ended at Tunbridge Wells a week earlier. Against Zimbabwe, India were 17 for 5 and then 78 for 7. Kapil came in at number six and made 175 not out from 138 balls, with 16 fours and 6 sixes, an innings that nobody at home ever saw because a BBC strike meant the cameras were not there. India won by 31 runs, beat Australia, and then beat England in the semi-final at Old Trafford, where Mohinder Amarnath took 2 for 27 and made 46, the first of his two player-of-the-match awards in a week.
183 all out
The final itself started badly. Put in to bat, India lost Sunil Gavaskar for 2. Krishnamachari Srikkanth played the innings of the day, 38 from 57 balls that included a hooked six off Malcolm Marshall and a cover drive off Andy Roberts that he finished on one knee, but Roberts, Marshall, Michael Holding and Joel Garner worked through the order. Amarnath made 26, Sandeep Patil 27, Madan Lal 17, Syed Kirmani 14. India were all out for 183 in the 55th over, and the general view, in the press box and the stands, was that the match would be over by tea.
The catch
Balwinder Sandhu bowled Gordon Greenidge with an inswinger that the opener, shouldering arms, left alone. Then Richards came in and began to hit. He made 33 from 28 balls, and every one of his seven fours looked like the start of the end. With West Indies on 57 for 2, Madan Lal pitched one short, Richards pulled it, mistimed it, and the ball went high towards midwicket. Kapil, running back from mid-on with his eyes on the sky, covered twenty yards and took it over his shoulder.
Everything turned. Madan Lal took three wickets, Amarnath three. Larry Gomes and Clive Lloyd, the captain, went cheaply. Jeff Dujon and Malcolm Marshall added 43 before Amarnath, bowling gentle medium pace in a jumper, had both. At 140, he trapped Holding leg before, and the umpire's finger went up in front of the pavilion. India had won by 43 runs.
The balcony
Kapil Dev lifted the Prudential Cup on the Lord's balcony, grinning in a way that Indian cricket had not been allowed to before. Amarnath was player of the match for the second time in a week. Roger Binny finished as the tournament's leading wicket-taker with 18. The Board of Control for Cricket in India had so little money set aside for a victory that Lata Mangeshkar sang at a benefit concert to raise the players' bonus.
Why it matters
The 1983 World Cup changed what cricket was for in India. The game moved from the Test match at the ground to the one-day match on television, and a generation of children, among them a ten-year-old in Bombay called Sachin Tendulkar, decided what they wanted to be. The 2011 and 2024 World Cups, the IPL and the crowds at the Wankhede all have their beginning in Kapil's catch and the balcony at Lord's.
