Rings Of Saturn

JUNE 25, 1983. It's a Saturday afternoon in India, and the planetary positions betray nothing unusual. By evening, as India's meagre armoury is spent against the demon quartet of Roberts, Garner, Marshall and Holding in distant Lord's, everyone has given up their residual belief in magic, miracles and similar other-worldly things. Even DD plays to form—courtesy Mrs G, it's bringing the BBC pictures late to a waiting nation. India's proud enough to be a wildcard finalist, and now, half-way through the match, everything has an air of formality about it.

For, 183 in 60 overs is no challenge for the power-drunk Windies. Greenidge falls to the nastiest in-cutter B.S. Sandhu has bowled in his career, but that only brings in Viv Richards. A whirlwind 33 sees the King at his imperious best, all scorn for India's military medium attack. Then, it happens...he pull-drives Madan Lal, skying the ball towards the midwicket boundary. What follows has ceased to be a simple statistic. It wasn't just a cherry that Kapil latched on to, it was—for millions—a chance to grasp the world in one's fist!

It's late Saturday night, and all those who slept, blissfully unaware, awaken to a small-hours Sunday morning win by India. No one remembered that it was India's second World Cup in eight years—Ajitpal Singh had done it with hockey in '75. But, to digress a bit, there's a manifest difference in the 'fortunes'. Ajitpal, in '83, was still pleading for the "plot of land" he and his World Cup-winning hockey team had been promised. The cricketers, as the blue-eyed djinns of a nation's surrogate desires, rake it in. Kapil's Devils—the very coinage mirrors a new-found potency; the thrill, after decades of being gentleman losers, of rediscovering a long-lost killer gene.

Yet Kapil's was a movement from agony to ecstasy in that momentous '82-83 season. The 'Picture of the Year' is worth capturing. The fifth and penultimate Test is in progress at the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore. The charismatic Imran Khan has already reverse-swung that grudge series (vs Gavaskar's India) by winning three Tests. January 26, Republic Day, is rest day. Kapil is secretly summoned, across the Wagah border, by the anti-Sunny powers-that-be. On his hush-hush arrival, Kapil is told that he's taking over as captain for the coming West Indies tour. Sunny pre-empts the bombshell by noting in his Mid-Day column: "Fresh blood, new ideas are what Indian cricket needs right now." He congratulates Kapil, offering full cooperation, even before the Haryana harpoon is thrust upon him as captain.

The tour, coming on World Cup eve, meant five Tests and three one-dayers against the fastest bowlers and the hardest hitters in the game—a fiery baptism into skipperhood. Kapil is by no means disgraced, as the Windies win the rubber 2-0 and the one-day series 2-1. Gav-askar, having labelled the Caribbean spectators "savages" in Sunny Days, chooses to reach late, and has, by his standards, a lean series: 20 & 0, 1 & 32, 147, 2 & 199, 18 & 1. "It's not Sunny, it's someone else masquerading as him!" exclaims Tony Cozier in a piece of confidence-shattering analysis. He was to fare no better in the Prudential Cup.

Kapil, of course, was to have his finest moment. Forgotten now is the tragedy of coincidences that surrounded it. He becomes captain on February 23, for the first Test at Kingston.On December 29, as the final Test of the return series against Lloyd's men draws to a close, he ceases to be captain. And the man set to wrest the crown from him in '84? Who else but Sunny, for the first Test against the same Pakistan at the same Gaddafi Stadium in the same Lahore.

How does this turnabout happen? After the World Cup loss to India, Clive Lloyd & Co crashland in Kanpur on October 21. Revenge is what Marshall, Holding, Roberts and Daniel are seeking. Lloyd's men clean-sweep the one-dayers 5-0. The Prudential score is well and truly settled as, for good measure, they win the six-Test series 3-0, more conclusively than that margin suggests. Amarnath, Man of the Match in that June 25 final, gets cricket's equivalent of the full monty. "Dial 001000 for Mohinder!" is the Windies chant, as six Test innings see Lala Amarnath's son struggle for a measly single. On December 29, '83, as Kapil loses all, the drawn sixth Test at Chepauk sees Sunil Gavaskar hit up a record 236 not out! That lazy Saturday afternoon of June swerves out of view as the calendar of success comes a full circle for Kapil.