25 June 1983: Clive Lloyd Reflects on a Defining Day for Indian Cricket
For Sir Clive Lloyd, 25 June 1983 remains a melancholic memory that he has relived many times since. While the wound has healed with time, the scar remains. The first time I discussed the 1983 World Cup at length with Sir Clive was in Oxford in 2009, during the ICC Centenary Conference, which I had the pleasure of organising.
Lloyd had come for two days and stayed in the St John’s College alumni guest accommodation, in the very next room to mine. On each of those days, we ended up chatting until 2 or 3 am. Lloyd, in a good mood, is one of the finest storytellers of the modern game. A true great, he has seen cricket transform into a commercially successful spectacle and has presided over that evolution.
Chasing a record third consecutive World Cup title as captain, Lloyd was emphatic in declaring there was no question of complacency. The West Indies had lost to India in the opening round of the tournament and knew what Kapil Dev and his men were capable of. India were not a team to be taken lightly.
“They had beaten Australia and England on their way to the final and had some excellent all-round cricketers in the team,” Lloyd said.
It was just that the final proved a bad day — a day when nothing worked for the West Indies when they came out to bat. “Bowling India out for 183 was a very good effort, and on most days, we would have chased this score down comfortably,” he lamented. “But for cricket, it was a great result. It helped Indian cricket turn into something fundamentally different, and world cricket too benefitted from this turnaround.”
The notion that the West Indies could be beaten had finally seeped in, effectively breaking their monopoly. “Even when we beat the Indians convincingly in the winter of 1983, we knew it was only a matter of time before they became a cricketing superpower,” said one of the greatest West Indian captains. “The self-belief the World Cup victory gave Indian cricket had little parallel. It was great for your cricket.”
As the conversation turned once more to 25 June 1983 over lunch when we met the day before yesterday, Lloyd was characteristically matter-of-fact. “I don’t want to go into what went wrong for us,” he said. “We did not bat well — that is the simple answer. We needed one batsman to stay on for a big score, but that didn’t happen. Much like what happened to your [women’s] team against South Africa on 21 June. In the World Cup final, the Indians bowled and caught well and never really allowed us to get into a groove, which is so essential in a big final.”
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