There was no huge build-up. There couldn’t be. Six previous World Cup games had produced one win, against lowly East Africa, and India were finding their feet in limited overs cricket. Only 40 one-dayers had been played over 11 years and 28 of them had been lost. The World Cup meant a week in England in mid-June. This time it might be a bit longer since each team played each other twice. In spite of that, the World Cup was a mere 16-day affair. Had it not been for World Series Cricket, and the events in Australia, it might have remained as short as most modern weddings.

There were some signs, though, that things might be changing. A couple of wins had materialised in Australia (wins were as difficult to find as a melody in a Himesh Reshamiyya album or a hit from the Ramgopal Varma factory), and much to everyone’s astonishment the mighty West Indies had been beaten at home for the first time.

And, as I read through an amateur analysis I had made for the Deccan Chronicle on the 4th of June, 1983, I discover that Kim Hughes had labelled India the dark horses. The fan in me had tried to make out a case for India to qualify for the semi-final and, the day after the article had appeared, an elderly man laughed at my youthful optimism. “Semi-final, ha!” he said as if I had suggested that the left might go along with the nuclear deal.

Still, as India stumbled and sailed through, Kapil Dev made more than 80 out of that 175, while I was driving on a Lambretta from home to the local Doordarshan studio, nobody believed India could win. Indeed on the evening of the 25th we had a little school reunion planned. I saw the first half at a friend’s place in colour (they were the only family I knew who had colour television!) and then popped away to Nanking in Secunderabad, absolutely certain that the game would be over before the mandatory sweet corn vegetable soup arrived! We only discovered that the West Indians had lost seven wickets when a friend called home and by the time we reached his house, Kapil Dev had got Andy Roberts lbw.

In the month that followed, Doordarshan must have played that match everyday. I swear I could have told you what was going to happen with every ball and every time Kapil Dev ran backwards to catch Viv Richards, we celebrated. Soon, rewards were being announced with the kind of fanfare that suggested 1947 had arrived again. Land was being promised, so were rice and railway tickets, and then, like now, it gave crooked patriots an opportunity to get into the newspapers by making promises they never intended to keep anyway.

So did India win that day or did the West Indies lose? Were the mighty champions overconfident? Or did a group of honest triers get it right just when it mattered?

I guess there is merit in the overconfidence theory as there is in the fact that India caught everything that came their way and had the bowlers for the situation. But remember too, that it was a wonderfully balanced team with five seam and swing bowlers and one spinner and virtually no tail-ender. Kapil Dev batted at No. 6 but the next three (Kirti Azad, Roger Binny and Madan Lal) could have played, and indeed did, as batsmen for their state side. Kirmani had batted No. 7 for India in Test cricket and Sandhu had to be one of the stodgiest No. 11s around.

Twenty five years later, World Cup’83 was an example of what was possible. India didn’t have even the pockets of affluence and enterprise it does now and the win appeared as a ray of optimism. A day after India became world champions, I boarded a train to Ahmedabad, a journey that took 36 hours and a day’s stop over in Mumbai to complete. A few months later, in a classroom, a professor was wondering whether India would have a 1000 crore company. 24 years later, a television company paid four times that for rights to a T-20 tournament!