You had to be there © Getty Images

“What’re you watching so quizzically?” I asked. “It’s Kapil Dev,” she said, “I wonder what he’s doing on television.” “It’s the 25th anniversary of the World Cup victory. It’s probably a silver jubilee special.” “Twenty fifth?” she rolled her eyes, “who cares ...”

I stared back, smiled what I thought was a wry smile and tucked into my chicken tikka masala. It was not that I had nothing too say; it was that I had too much. The welter of emotions that June 25, 1983, triggers within me – or, indeed, a few million others of my generation, give or take some years – is too personal and too complex to adequately convey to someone much younger or from another country or culture. At lunch on Sunday, my niece was another country.

In a sense you have to be English to fully understand what the 1966 World Cup meant for your society. For that matter, you have to be Pakistani to fully appreciate what the 1992 cricket World Cup victory stood for. It would help, of course, if you’d been around to watch those games, or just experience them on radio or television.

I was 14 that summer, and on June 25 my parents dragged me to the engagement of a close family friend’s daughter. It was a quiet, private party – about 30-40 people in an apartment. It was soon apparent that everybody’s mind was elsewhere. The engagement date had been fixed months earlier, well before anybody knew how the Prudential Cup would turn out.

Yet, as it happened, it now coincided with the Big Day. I’d seen most the Indian innings at home, but as the party picked up pace, India began to pick up wickets. The couple was urged to exchange rings double quick, chairs and sofas were moved around, and the party crowded before one small television. Even dinner – an elaborate spread it was, since the girl’s father owned a swish restaurant – was served in between overs, right by the television.

To cut a long story short, the party ended early, and everybody drove home manically to catch the last few wickets, and announce victory. It often struck me in later years that few actually wanted to stay back and watch the whole match at the party venue itself. As victory moved from possibility to probability, people began to reach for their car keys.

It was if they wanted to be in their individual homes when the magic moment arrived. I suppose you can party anywhere, but you have to be home for Diwali, or Christmas or Id. June 25, 1983, was a day vested in sacredness.

For me, the moment was particularly and doubly sweet because justice had been done. Mohinder Amarnath was my favourite cricketer, a boyhood hero who I thought had been treated unfairly by the selectors and the Bombay lobby that then ruled Indian cricket – it still does, but that’s another story. The Prudential Cup completed a dream comeback for him. He’d stood up to Imran Khan in the winter of 1982-93 as all around him crumbled; he had hooked and hit his way to runs and glory against the West Indies – India’s only series in the Caribbean while facing the pace quartet – earlier in the year; and he had made the World Cup his own.

I guess it’s not just age that causes me to remember 1983 more than other years, other victories. Adelaide in 2004 and Perth earlier this year; the Test series triumph in that remarkable tour of Pakistan in 2004; the brilliant burst that took India, after a faltering start, to the 2003 World Cup final – there has been much to cherish in recent years.

Having said that, the 1983 moment still stands out, simply because it was, for that period, so unusual. India rarely won anything significant those days. In the immediate past, we’d beaten West Indies, Australia and England at home, but all of them were second-rate sides, without the Packer players or some top star or the other. The victory against Pakistan in 1979-80 was memorable but came, except for the final two Tests, in the absence of Imran Khan. Imran himself showed up India’s batting as sub-prime in the 1982-83 series.

That was a time when the average, reasonably informed cricket fan could recount which Indians had scored centuries at Lord’s and newspaper writers still saw that, for some reason, as a pinnacle of achievement. Today, even Ajit Agarkar has scored a century at Lord’s.

The 1983 team was not India’s best ever. I would argue that the 2003 World Cup finalist XI had a better batting line-up and, with the exception of Kapil – who I would happily have had for the then tyro Zaheer Khan – a better bowling attack as well.

Yet, the XI Good Men of 1983 were honest cricketers. They had what illustrious predecessors and successors have sometimes lacked – pluck, grit and courage. Kapil hit 175 not out coming in at 9 for 4. Don’t forget, Roger Binny, Madan Lal and Syed Kirmani supported him at the other end for close to 250 runs. Yashpal Sharma and Amarnath were not history’s most elegant batsmen – but I’d want them on my side at Armageddon.

In many ways, the fact that Twenty20 and IPL have taken over cricket in 2008 has completed a circle that began with the Prudential Cup. Starting 1983, the limited-overs game – F50, to use today’s argot – was recognised as one for bits-and-pieces cricketers: those who could bat a bit, bowl a bit, chase the ball hard in the outfield. Madan Lal and Binny were never going to be Test match greats but they were invaluable in an ODI.

Twenty20 has inverted the pyramid. It’s brought back the specialist. Only an outstanding bowler – Glenn McGrath comes to mind – can restrict runs or even hope to bowl a maiden over in this format. As for front-ranking batsmen, they have a huge role coming in at the top of the order. The middle or late order is not always as important in a Twenty20 game – for the most part, either your first four batsmen win the match for you or you lose.

In 1983, it was so different. The mouse roared, the little man punched above his weight. On a Sunday evening 25 years ago, we were all kings for the rest of the night.

	Players have a right to be worried and a right to be consulted on security issues, without cricket officials giving them a “take it or leave it” ultimatum © AFP

The ICC should have seen this coming but has been deliberately and cussedly ostrich-like. A few weeks ago, I met a senior cricket official from a south Asian country and asked him if he foresaw problems ahead. After all, nothing had changed between the cancellation of the Australian tour of Pakistan in April and now. Pakistan was unlikely to experience a change in threat perceptions by the late summer. Would not the same logic and the same fear factor that drove away Andrew Symonds and Cricket Australia still hold true?

My question was waved aside with an “It’s all okay.” Now that the problem is beginning to emerge and be heard, the ICC is still insisting that Pakistan is perfectly safe and that the upcoming Asia Cup is an adequate dress rehearsal. Should the Australians and English think otherwise, be certain that somebody will conjure up the familiar “Asians versus Old Empire” argument and sundry Indian and Pakistani busybodies will go around making smug statements about how the West hates cricket’s new power equations.

This is not to suggest that the cricketers who don’t want to go to Pakistan are necessarily correct or even consistent. Yet, the fact is they have a right to be worried and a right to be consulted, without cricket officials giving them a “take it or leave it” ultimatum.

True, the Jaipur terror blasts did not affect the Indian Premier League. In July 2005, the Lord’s Test between Australia and England began exactly two weeks after the London bombings and there was never a suggestion of cancellation. Even so, there are two factors to be considered in case of the Champions’ Trophy.

First, while the whole world is threatened by terrorism, Jaipur and London were one-off incidents. Pakistan has been a battleground for the past few years, and the past seven or eight months have been particularly disturbing. In 2002, Australia moved a post-9/11 series in Pakistan to Sri Lanka and Sharjah, and the ICC nodded in agreement. It can be argued that the security situation in Pakistan has worsened in the past six years. Not that Pakistani cricket fans are to blame for this, but surely if cricketers are anxious they have a point.

Second, and this is a more damning indictment of the cricket establishment and its dogged refusal to realistically understand what motivates a sportsperson, nobody takes the Champions’ Trophy seriously. It is a meaningless, oversize tournament that is set for obsolescence, especially after the success of Twenty20.

If no Australian cricketer even considered going home from England in 2005, it was because an Ashes series was cherished as a personal landmark and a larger tradition not to be messed with. In the case of the IPL, the instinct was baser – the money was so good that nobody wanted to flee the bank. Noble aspirations and commercial impulses – so much of our lives is a mix of these two motivations, why shouldn’t it be so for cricketers?

The Champions’ Trophy is different. It is a crashing bore. The last edition became a television disaster after the Indians got knocked out, indicating that only mindless fanatics – the sort who follow their team’s scorecards during side matches in Zimbabwe – were interested.

While scheduling tournaments – in terms of frequency as well as geographical setting –cricket boards and the ICC must consult their players. If some players want to pick and choose, given an over-burdened cricket calendar and a host of other attendant parameters, they should be given that space. As societies, we need to stop treating cricketers as proxy soldiers.

Otherwise, private employers like the Indian Cricket League will seem more attractive and amenable. If my boss refuses to listen to me, I may settle for a less high-profile but reasonably paying job elsewhere.

By all means play the Champions’ Trophy in Pakistan – and may it go off smoothly and swimmingly – but don’t rubbish or penalise the players who express their doubts or don’t want to go. The ICC and its affiliates, sadly, have an HR policy devised for robots.

	It is difficult to re-read Cardus’ prose and imagine him reporting an IPL game © Getty Images

People who had never read Neville Cardus were weeping in his memory. Those who wouldn’t spend an afternoon watching an exacting and gripping run crawl in, say, a New Zealand versus England Test, were shedding tears for the “traditions of the great game”. Critical reactions to the Indian Premier League came wrapped in exasperating hypocrisy.

It is important to understand how we play, describe, consume and celebrate cricket today in comparison with, to pick a random noun, the age when Victor Trumper was justifiably hailed as an artiste even if his Test average – a meaningless bauble that – was only 38. These changes are not unique to T20; they have been true for ODIs (F50, if you like) and even modern Test cricket.

What was once a languid, gentle pastime is today a muscular, rapid-fire sport; there is less grace, more punch. It has given us openers like Matthew Hayden, whose batting has all the charm and delicacy of a butcher but who is so brutally and gloriously effective. It has also led to scoring rates in Test matches routinely crossing three or four runs an over, and remarkable athleticism that is, paradoxically, saving about 40 runs per Test batting day.

All this is a far distance from the easy-paced 1950s, from the romanticism of annual fixtures between Gentlemen and Players. It leaves less time for contemplation and pondering the vicissitudes of life while watching a single innings. Like always, cricket is a metaphor for society – the freneticism of the 21st century breeds IPL; Virender Sehwag sends text messages, Peter May probably wrote in longhand.

Cricket is not alone in trimming the frills. In 1994, Brazil took away the World Cup playing dull, defensive football. It won the final on penalties after an eminently forgettable final that had none of the flair and dash of Pele, Garincha or Zico. Likewise, modern hockey has little room for delectable dribbling and wrist-work.

	What was once a languid, gentle pastime is today a muscular, rapid-fire sport; there is less grace, more punch © Getty Images

My favourite cricket writer is actually E.W. ‘Jim’ Swanton, Hutton to Cardus’ Bradman (or Laxman to his Tendulkar, suit your analogy), and a crisp, spare writer who would have been a natural in a T20 press box. So it’s not the length of the match that circumscribes the writer but the writer’s inherent skills that re-create the magic of cricket, any type of cricket.

That brings us to point three: why has IPL reportage in Indian newspapers been so uniformly pedestrian and non-memorable? This again is an issue that needs deeper examination. With a few honourable exceptions, cricket writing in Indian newspapers, magazines and websites is sub-standard. As the number of column inches and pages devoted to cricket has increased, the quality of cricket writing has dropped.

There are good political columnists around, fine cultural and film essayists, engaging book reviewers; so why aren’t there a plethora of readable cricket writers? Why do so few cricket writers have a sense of narrative? There is a sinister inverse correlation between volume and quality of cricket coverage. Today, editors and newspapers (and executive producers and news channels) are driven by cricket as celebrity. They need the oxygen of access: for that exclusive bite from this batsman’s mother, that prized photograph of that bowler’s dog.

The casualty is disinterested assessment, acute analysis and well-thought out criticism. IPL didn’t create this monster – India’s cricket media brought it upon itself.

On June 25, 1983, India won the Prudential Cup. The run-up to the silver jubilee has been marked by silly controversies and spurious theories. This (June 1) morning in The Pioneer, I looked back at simply the cricket

	For cricket fans of a certain generation, June 25, 1983, remains, quite without question, the date of their lives © Getty Images

Before the Delhi Daredevils, there were Kapil’s Devils. For cricket fans of a certain generation, June 25, 1983, remains, quite without question, the date of their lives. It was the day India won the Prudential Cup and a bunch of nine journeymen and two all-time greats (one of them, Sunil Gavaskar, a trifle out of form) pulled off the biggest miracle in Indian sport.

India has won much since. Especially in the past decade, after the Sourav Ganguly-John Wright duumvirate took Indian cricket into the 21st century, literally and otherwise, and introduced it to a modern idiom, India has reached an ODI World Cup final, won the Twenty20 World Cup, won Test matches in Australia, Test series in England, Pakistan and the West Indies. Yet, a flurry of success and a hyperactive cricket media environment make remembering dates and landmarks impossible.

It began with a sign from the gods, but few chose to read it. On June 9, India took on the West Indies and helped by a plucky 89 from Yashpal Sharma gave the Goliaths from the Caribbean Islands something to chase. Rain interrupted play that day and the match continued on June 10. Incredibly, despite a never ending last wicket partnership of 71, the West Indies lost. It was their first defeat in three world cups, but critics preferred citing it as an early aberration rather than evidence of a maturing of Indian one-day cricket.

The rest of the story is well-known. There was Kapil Dev’s 175 not out in a victory against Zimbabwe that ultimately proved inconsequential. India still had to beat Australia in the final league game, which it did, with Roger Binny and Madan Lal taking eight wickets between them.

The match that showed the new Indian steel was, however, the second one against the West Indies. With Viv Richards scoring an imperious hundred, the defending champions won. Yet, India battled grittily. Mohinder Amaranth scored 80 ignoring short-pitched bowling and blows on the body. Dilip Vengsarkar was hit in the teeth and had to retire hurt. It was an honourable defeat; there was no surrender.

In a strange, pre-modern media age, Indians got to hear of the early stages of the Prudential Cup on the radio and courtesy BBC commentary, but saw none of it. Only two matches were telecast live – the semi-final against England and the final itself. Even here, telecast was interrupted by that old Doordarshan chestnut: “Satellite link is temporarily not available”.

To anyone who watched those two pulsating, drama-filled matches, almost every ball was etched in memory for years afterwards. The 60-overs a side limited-overs match – what would you call it today: S60? – was far closer to Test cricket than, well, sometimes even contemporary Test cricket is.

In the semi-final, England set India a target of 214 in 60 overs, an asking rate of just about 3.50. Today, it would seem a joke. Then, in the cautious words of one television commentator, it was described as “gettable”. After the openers went, Amarnath and Sharma – India’s unlikely middle order heroes in an entirely unlikely ODI tournament – grafted and defended and built their innings.

Then, just as all of those before their television sets felt it was too late, the Indians opened up. An array of boundaries followed. Sandeep Patil came in and hit a 32-ball 50 – yes, there was fast scoring even before M.S. Dhoni! – and India was in the final.

The final itself is, at least for this cricket fan, not so much a match as a blur of images – Balwinder Sandhu’s banana in-swinger that bowled Gordon Greenidge as he shouldered arms; Jeffrey Dujon slapping the turf on being deceived by a slower one from Amarnath (did he ever bowl a faster one?); Amarnath again ambling in to bowl and hitting Michael Holding high on the pad.

Each of those dismissals was meaningful. Greenidge’s departure meant that the West Indies didn’t get the quick, smooth start they wanted. With Dujon ended the West Indies’ last chance – from 76 for 6, wicketkeeper Dujon and Malcolm Marshall had taken the score to 119. In getting Holding, India got hold of the World Cup. It was all over.

Like Tololing or Tiger Hill in another contest, another time, India eventually won the Prudential Cup inch by inch, besting the West Indies lower order ball by ball, run by run. It was a gripping, low-key but epic final hour.

The morning was sunny. Kris Srikkanth came in and blazed away to 38 – it was an era before Virender Sehwag, remember, Indian openers were only expected to defend and play copybook shots. A rasping square drive on one knee, which sent an Andy Roberts delivery to the boundary, was perhaps the shot of the tournament.

Then, as easily as they had dazzled, the Indians imploded. One hundred and eighty-three seemed no score at all. After the match, Kapil Dev was asked what he had said to his team as he led them out to field. “I told the boys, let’s go and play,” said the prosaic captain, who spoke with deeds rather than words. It was left to Sunil Gavaskar to come up with a more inspirational call: “Chalo jawanon, chal ke ladenge (Onward soldiers, it’s time to fight).”

Greenidge’s lucky dismissal – Sandhu tried to explain later that he had deliberately swung the ball six inches but never mind – only brought in Viv Richards. The King smashed Madan Lal as only he could and the commentary team was speculating on the match being done in 30 overs. It was time for the mother of all miracle moments.

Richards pulled Madan Lal, got it a bit wrong but seemed about to get away with it anyway. The ball climbed, Kapil Dev, running backwards, his eyes only on the ball, grabbed it mid-air. Richards was gone; almost as Richie Benaud was beginning to say: “Richards miscues but it doesn’t matter ... Another boundary for the great man, the West Indies on course for a hat-trick ...”

After Richards walked back, there was a sense of urgency and new energy in the Indians. This wasn’t going to be a walkover, no it wasn’t. This was a team supposed to be split between the Bombay and Delhi/Punjabi camps, between Gavaskar and Kapil. Yet, by the middle of the West Indies innings, the collective brains trust of the Indian team was in business. Gavaskar was pointing to positions, advising Kapil on field placing, while Syed Kirmani and Amarnath watched. When it came to the crunch, the Indians didn’t let each other down. It was a fairy tale; and Cinderella did it with time to spare.

Great events lead to great mythology. Immediately after India’s biggest ODI cricket victory, Dom Moraes wrote another of his incomprehensible essays, attributing the achievement to disagreeable “north Indian nationalism”. I’m still trying to figure out what he meant.

Twenty-five years on, the Prudential Cup has spawned thousands of articles, dozens of self-styled experts and even some anodyne PhD theses – this changed the face of Indian cricket, made it an aspirational calling for young people, introduced money and ODI mania to Indian cricket fans and so on.

Actually, the Prudential Cup of 1983 did little of the sort. True, the winning XIV were feted, met by the prime minister, serenaded by Lata Mangeshkar, a custom-written song (the remarkably unmemorable Bharat vishwa vijeta) and given DDA apartments in Delhi.

Yet, India’s one-day cricket binge was at least four years away, and should correctly be dated to the hosting of the 1987 Reliance Cup. Cricket commerce arrived only in 1993-94, when the Board of Control for Cricket in India sold television rights to private channels and began monetising its key properties.

True, the Reliance Cup would not have happened – India would not have bid for the right to host the 1987 world cup – if Kapil’s Devils had not won. Yet, it is perhaps best to remember June 25, 1983, for what happened that day in London, not for peddling spurious, post facto theories. Every underdog has its day; this month, 25 years ago, we had ours.