1983 Prudential Cup and 2011 World Cup Cricket

I am one of the lucky person who had watched the 1983 Cricket World cup live which was also called the Prudential Cup. India was playing against the West Indies who were the favourite. They had great players like Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Malcom Marshall, Micheal Holding, etc. The Winning Indian team had Kapil Dev [Captian], K Srikath, Sunil Gavaskar, Yashpal Sharma, Sandeep Patil, K Azad, Roger Binny, Madan Lal, Kirmani [Wicket Keeper] and Sandhu. The 1983 World cup matches started on the 9th June 1983 and ended on the 25th of June 1983

India won the match by 43 runs at Lord’s in London creating history for the first time [Score Card]. In 1983 World Cup, there were 8 teams namely England, Pakistan, New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Group A and West Indies, India, Australia and Zimbabwe in Group B. There was a stunning 173 not out by the then Indian captain Kapil Dev which was not even recorded on tapes as on that day BBC was on strike. The Prudential cup was telecasted live by Doordarshan but very few Indians could have watched it as television was not there in every home those days. It was telecasted in colour, but again color televisions were rare those days. 50% of Indian population today is under the age of 25.

Mohinder Amarnath was the man of match and also won the man of the series award. Those days the prize money was very low compared to these days. The man of the match was payed only Rs 9000 and now Mahendra Singh Dhoni is payed 1.5 lakhs for each run he scores in IPL and other earnings in crores for endorsements.

The World champions had to wait for an Air India flight to come back to India now we see charted flights ready for the Indian team. In 1983 World Cup, the matches would be a whole day event with 60 overs to play and the lunch time would be of 2 hours. The biggest change I see is in the Empiring. There were many wrong fatal decisions by the empires those days, but now you see things handled using technology.

Again after 28 years India has a chance to win the World cup and today is the day. Things have changed a lot like the benefits for the players, the support from the citizens of India, etc. We do have a deserving team and hope India will do it this time.

Check out this Video on Prudential Cup 1983