It’s tempting to say that on June 25, 1983, cricket was born in India. But that will not be true. What happened that day was much simpler—cricket replaced hockey as the national sport. It’s silly to use the word ‘unofficial’ here because the ‘official’ in matters concerning rail accident death toll and other frequent events in Indian society, has anyways only stood for lies. There are people who believe that India’s World Cup victory was such a powerful event that it killed Indian hockey. That’s not entirely true. Hockey killed itself beginning from early ’80s. What the 1983 victory did was herald cricket as perhaps the only area of human activity, and not just sports, where a wounded civilisation felt it could triumph over foreign lands. The memory that Indians have of that final, those images of the West Indian collapse and Kapil holding the cup, can only be matched by the native retention of Sholay. It was all very unreal. India in the finals itself was a shock to some of the Commonwealth and beyond. After India batted first, it all seemed over. 183 is a minuscule portion of a meal if the men at the table are called Greenidge, Haynes, Richards and Lloyd. It’s almost disrespectful to ask them go chase something like that.