TEAM INDIA’S JACKPOT MOMENTS

What if India had lost in the early rounds of the 1983 World Cup? Would cricket still have been the premier (and often only) sport shown on satellite television

A recent issue of Caravan magazine features a profile of N. Srinivasan, the most powerful man in world cricket. The writer, Rahul Bhatia, tells a story that is fascinating as well as chilling. Through a mixture of intelligence, cunning, and ruthlessness, Srinivasan acquired control first of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association; next of the Board of Control for Cricket in India; and, finally, of the International Cricket Council itself.

For all his undoubted talents — and ambition — Srinivasan may never have got to where he is now had it not been for two wickets that fell in distant locations, fully 24 years apart. The men responsible for those epoch-making dismissals need to be remembered in any objective account of how India became the global centre of cricket and a Madras entrepreneur the game’s most influential individual.

The first occurred in the World Cup final of 1983. India’s success in reaching that far exceeded our greatest expectations. In the two previous tournaments we had not got past the qualifying rounds. This time, we reached the semi-final only because of one once-in-a-lifetime innings by Kapil Dev. And so, against all odds, India reached the finals of the 1983 World Cup. Once there, we were expected to be easy meat for the West Indies. And so it seemed, after we had batted first, and were dismissed by Marshall, Holding and company for a modest 183.

Of these journeymen the most harmless was Balwinder Singh Sandhu. He ambled in a few paces and bowled at not much more than 70 miles an hour. But he could swing the ball, both ways, which is why he shared the new ball with Kapil. In Sandhu’s second over Greenidge let one pass, thinking it was swinging away. Instead it ducked in late, and took the off stump.

The West Indies should probably have won even after Greenidge departed. In previous World Cup finals Lloyd and Richards had scored hundreds. And they had other decent batsmen too. However, they would certainly have won had Greenidge not shouldered arms to that in-swinger.

In 1983, cricket was by no means what it has since become — the only popular sport in India. We had won the hockey World Cup in 1975, and the hockey gold medal in the 1980 Olympics. Ramanathan Krishnan and Jaideep Mukherjee, in 1966, and the Amritraj brothers and Jasjit Singh, in 1974, had taken us to the final of the Davis Cup. In Wilson Jones and Michael Ferreira we had produced world billiards champions.

Equations and adulations changed with the World Cup victory of 1983. Now cricket became sovereign. Satellite television had lately arrived in India. It was because Greenidge misjudged a ball in Lord’s that cricket became far and away the most important sport in India. Likewise, India became the financial and administrative centre of world cricket only because of another fatal misjudgment.

In September 2007, the International Cricket Council (ICC) hosted the inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa. The best Indian players, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly for example, declined to play, thinking it an inconsequential side-show. An inexperienced team was sent, captained by the then relatively unhonoured wicket-keeper-batsman, M.S. Dhoni.

The cricketers redeemed themselves by winning the T20 championship in South Africa. The final, played against the arch-enemy, Pakistan, was won (and lost) in the last over. This was bowled by Joginder Sharma, from Haryana. Facing Sharma was Misbah-ul-Haq, a batsman not in the same class as Gordon Greenidge, but nonetheless an extremely competent player, with a well-organized technique and a superb temperament. In nine cases out of ten, he would have guided his team to victory. This was the tenth, when he mistimed a scoop sweep — possibly because the ball from Sharma came even slower than he expected — into the hands of Sreesanth at fine leg.

India’s unlikely victory in that first World T20 Cup gave an enormous fillip to the inaugural tournament of the Indian Premier League, held just a few months later. In its origins, the IPL was an act of spite, started to put Subhas Chandra and his Indian Cricket League out of business.

What if India had lost in the early rounds of the 1983 World Cup? Would cricket still have been the premier (and often only) sport shown on satellite television? Surely, hockey — in which we had recently won World and Olympic titles — would have strongly rivalled it in popular affection. And what if Misbah’s scoop in the first World T20 final had evaded fine-leg and run away for four or six? Dhoni’s team would then have been derided and reviled for losing to the arch-enemy, Pakistan. And if the home country had not been World Champions at the time the Indian Premier League started, fans and funders would scarcely have flocked to it in the manner that they did.

The history of cricket, like the history of everything else, is determined in part by chance and contingency. Had Greenidge and Misbah not made those errors in 1983 and 2007 respectively, Srinivasan might now merely be the Managing Director of India Cements, rather than the Lord of World Cricket itself.