The Home Jinx

The more important changes we wrought on the Cup—as all players would surely aver—lay in the economics. Payments to the participating teams witnessed a quantum leap in '87. Winners Australia received £37,500, their co-finalists England got £18,000. Pakistan and India (as the two ruefully losing semi-finalists) collected £13,500 each. The Man of the Match award, starting with £300 in the round robin, went up to £3,000—to Australia's David Boon for his 75 in the Eden Gardens final. The total prize money worked out to precisely £99,300 (£90,000 as team prizes, £9,300 as Man of the Match awards). Lord's at last frankly conceded that it couldn't have raised resources on this scale. The World Cup event (in '92) had to move to Packer-driven Australia to prove that it could get bigger than Reliance '87.

Yet the Cup retains some unchanging qualities. Both India and Pakistan, hoping to be the first to win the event in their own backyard, had to be content with playing host. The home soil jinx remains unbroken. For Kapil, one shot in India's semi-final loss to Gatting's England meant losing his crown. At a critical stage, with just 87 runs needed from 15 overs with 5 wickets in hand, Kapil aimed for the Nariman Point skyscrapers. Only the shot could not match those lofty heights and fell safely into Gatting's gleeful hands. Likewise, Pakistan—led by that thoroughbred, Imran—made every post a winning one, until it came to the semi-final crunch against Border's Australia. Imran had promoted the concept of neutral umpiring in the subcontinent. The idea now boomeranged on him as, when all set on 58 to guide Pakistan into the final, Dickie Bird (of all whitecoats) ruled him out—caught by wicket-keeper Dyer off Border. Later Imran said that his own ideal of the neutral umpire had undone Pakistan. An Australia-England face-off was not quite what the full house at Eden Gardens had been hoping for. With neither India nor Pakistan a presence at Calcutta, it was like playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. N.K.P. Salve had won the anti-British battle but lost out on the crowning glory of staging an India-Pakistan 'war'!