Kapil's Devils

The scoreboard at Tunbridge Wells, a small ground in the English countryside, told a sorry story. India had lost four wickets for just 9 runs. Then a fifth fell, with 17 on the board.

It was 18 June 1983, and this was a World Cup match India had to win. The opponents were Zimbabwe, playing in their very first World Cup. If India lost, they were almost certainly going home.

Out walked the captain, a tall fast bowler from Haryana named Kapil Dev. He was twenty-four years old.

The team nobody feared

To understand why so few people expected anything of that team, you have to look at what came before. India had played in the first two World Cups, in 1975 and 1979. In six matches they had won only one, against East Africa.

In those days one-day cricket was still new to India. The team was built for long, patient Test matches, and many of its players were not used to the quicker game. Before the 1983 tournament, bookmakers in England offered odds of 66 to 1 against India winning it.

The great team of the age was the West Indies. They had won both World Cups so far, and their batsmen and fast bowlers frightened every side in the world.

But in their very first match of 1983, at Old Trafford in Manchester, India beat the West Indies by 34 runs. People called it a surprise and moved on. Then India lost heavily to Australia, and lost to the West Indies in the return match. By the time they reached Tunbridge Wells, they could not afford another defeat.

175 not out

Kapil Dev did not panic. He began by protecting his wicket and taking quiet singles, and with Roger Binny he steadied things for a while. Even so, the wickets kept falling at the other end. At 78 for 7, the match looked lost.

Then he started to hit. With Madan Lal, he slowly pulled the innings back. When the wicketkeeper, Syed Kirmani, came in to join him, the two of them added 126 runs together without being parted. At the time, that was a world record for the ninth wicket in one-day cricket.

Kapil hit the ball over the boundary six times and to the fence sixteen times. When the 60 overs ended, he was 175 not out, from 138 balls, the highest score ever made in a one-day international until then. India, who had been 17 for 5, finished on 266 for 8.

Zimbabwe fought hard, but they were bowled out for 235. India had won by 31 runs.

Almost nobody saw it. Television staff at the BBC were on strike that day, so the innings was never filmed. It lives on only in the scorebook and in the memories of the few thousand people who were there.

Believing

Something changed in the dressing room after that day. The players had seen their captain refuse to accept defeat, and they began to believe they could go further.

India beat Australia in their last group match to reach the semi-finals. There they met England, the home side, at Old Trafford, and won by six wickets. Mohinder Amarnath, a quiet, calm all-rounder, was named the best player of the match.

Now only one team stood between India and the cup. It was the West Indies, again.

Lord's, 25 June

The final was played at Lord's in London, the most famous cricket ground in the world. India batted first and struggled against the fast bowling. Krishnamachari Srikkanth made the top score, 38. The team was all out for just 183.

The West Indies had a long, powerful batting line-up. Most people thought the match was already over. Kapil Dev told his players that they had nothing to lose, and asked them to fight for every run.

Balwinder Sandhu bowled the dangerous opener Gordon Greenidge with a ball that swung in late. Then Viv Richards, the most feared batsman in the world, began to hit boundary after boundary. He mistimed a pull off Madan Lal, and the ball rose high towards the leg side. Kapil turned and ran back a long way with his eyes on the ball, and held the catch.

From there the West Indies slid. Madan Lal took three wickets. Mohinder Amarnath took three more, and when he trapped Michael Holding leg before wicket, the West Indies were all out for 140.

India had won the World Cup by 43 runs. Fans ran onto the grass at Lord's, and the players stood on the balcony and lifted the trophy. Amarnath was again named the best player of the match.

What one summer did

At home, people had followed the final on radio and on television sets in neighbours' houses. That night the streets filled with people celebrating.

The win changed cricket in India for good. Children all over the country picked up bats and balls, and the one-day game, which India had once treated as a sideshow, became a national passion. In the years that followed, India grew into one of the strongest forces in the sport.

The newspapers had a name for that team: Kapil's Devils. They were a group of players that the world had written off. They won because they kept believing, and because their captain, on a bad morning in Tunbridge Wells, showed them what refusing to give up looks like.

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Kapil Dev describes the 1983 tournament in his autobiography, Straight from the Heart. The full scorecards of every match are kept by ESPNcricinfo, and the tournament is reported in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1984.