Era passed by

Words - Paresh Narvekar

As I am writing this article today, the 2019 World Cup is the peak with India still unbeaten and King Kohli ably supported by the wise Mahi is on the prowl. This season of cricket world cup always brings back the memory of the 1983 finals and that was my first childhood memory of watching cricket on the television.

I fondly remember that we had a Bharat brand TV in our house in Worli Dairy Quarters. On our floor, all the children and youngsters used to come to our house to watch TV. We watched our first batting against the mighty Windies team. Shrikant and Gavaskar opened the innings. During those days, the matches were of 60 overs. We scored 183 runs with only 3 batsmen scoring above 20 and the 4th to reach that mark were the extras. The pace attack of Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshal, Michael Holdings and Joel Garner was the strongest bowling attack in the whole tournament. We lost all hopes as their batting was strong too with Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge. The first wicket of Greenidge was taken by Balwinder Singh Sandhu. He was bowled by an inswinger which later got famous as the banana swing. Our hopes were kindled by this and we all sat together with high hopes. In walked Richards to bat with a swagger which is still unmatched. He had the aura as if he ruled the whole stadium and he started in his usual attacking way. People slowly started losing interest in the match and walked away from the television. Honestly, we switched off the television too. After some time we heard a big roar. We immediately started our idiot box and were fortunate to see the replay of the amazing catch taken by Kapil Dev off Madan Lal to get Richards out. Kapil had just caught the World Cup and there was no looking back after that. That is where the whole nation rejoiced and then on everyone in India was hooked to cricket.

From that day till now we were fortunate to see legends like Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, K Shrikant ( my personal favourite), Vengsarkar and Shastri from the earlier era. We found two gems in the Benson and Hedges cup in 1987 Australia which we won under the leadership of Gavaskar. The two players were Sadanand Vishwanath and Sivaramakrishnan. Vishwanath was a wicketkeeper and later was a leg spinner. Both became famous in that tournament but neither of them lived up to their expectations later. The other big event in this tournament was the rise of another star called Ravi Shastri. We were more fascinated with Ravi Shastri winning the Audi rather than the cup itself.

Then dawned the era of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. This new kid on the block changed the way we watched cricket. At the age of 16 against the fiery pace attack of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, his grit and determination were seen in that series itself when he stood his grounds after being hit by a bouncer from Waqar Younis on his face. He went on to write cricketing history after that as the greatest batsmen of Indian cricket. Even Sir Don Bradman compared his batting techniques to his. Sachin was so famous in India that TVs would get On with him playing and go Off when he used to get out. There was a time when the whole team used to depend on his batting for runs. Over a period of time, Sourav Ganguly, Virendra Sehwag, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman dawned on the Indian cricket scene. The team was now strong with no dependence on one person. Sourav Ganguly became the captain of the Indian team and he taught the team to fight. India won many cups and tournaments during his tenure.

In 2004, in came MS Dhoni and a new spirit was seen in Indian cricket. He rose to be the captain of the Indian team in 2007 and also won the inaugural T20 World Cup without any big stars. He further went to win the ODI World Cup in 2011 and made Sachin Tendulkar’s dream of winning the World Cup true. The whole nation rejoiced like never before. During Dhoni’s tenure as captain, he made a fitter team India and that could be seen with improvement in the fielding. Virat Kohli is now the new mainstay in batting supported by Rohit Sharma. A lot of new talent was discovered with Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya playing for India after their brilliant performance in the IPL. Dhoni is playing his last World Cup and we have managed to reach the semifinal now.

I consider myself very lucky to have lived in an era where I have seen greats of Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli. Cheers and all the best to Team India.