The marks of time are visible on them, in the form of hair that have greyedor gone, furrows on the faces that have filled out, and the strain on thebuttons of the white shirt that proclaims them a winner of the 1983 World Cup.The eyes have dulled, the arms don't have the force of youth. They're human now-- their ability to do amazing things with and to the cricket ball is gone.They've become declamation artists, master of elocution, save the diffidentRoger Binny, whose face still floods with red when he's invited to talk.
They are, every World Cup year, sought out to retell the story of their triumph.A few even have media contracts that restrict them from talking freely about theevents of June 1983, events akin to the fall of a boulder into a tranquil pond,the ripples from which are still reaching the shores.
Kapil Dev, the captain of the team that beat the West Indies in the final 25years ago, is one man who can and does talk -- and talk with mastery, if wediscount grammar. He introduces each of the 13 men who played under him with witand a flourish; he summaries them, condenses them into an apt idiom -- thepolite, the self-effacing, the lovable, the disciplinarian idol and the joker.
The bonhomie among the class of 1983, men whose achievement broughtsubcontinental market forces to play, which altered equations among thecricket-playing nations, is evident -- though Ravi Shastri does say that whenmen work together, there always will be some "tickles".