India v Pakistan: 1985 World Championship

To suggest that Sunday's ICC Champions Trophy is the first time the subcontinental neighbours have squared off in the final of a major, multi-team global ODI tournament is to ignore one of world cricket's more curious competitions.

Not the semi-regular Australasian Cup events staged for nakedly commercial reasons in Sharjah from the mid-80s to the early 90s, featuring teams from Asia and the Pacific (including a fledgling UAE combination one year) and won in all three iterations by Pakistan.

Rather, the only true tournament pulling together the game's pre-eminent outfits from across the world and in which India and Pakistan were to fight for the ultimate prize, was the grandly titled World Championship of Cricket staged in Australia at the end of the 1984-85 summer.

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The ambitious brainchild of the Victorian Cricket Association, the seven-team tournament featuring all of the then-Test playing nations was billed as a celebration of 150 years of European settlement in the state that had pioneered Test cricket in 1877.

However, there also existed the lure of a huge global television audience and significant sponsorship (including the naming rights taken up by a major multinational tobacco company), as well as the leverage such a drawcard might bring to fast-track the VCA's ambitions for floodlights at the MCG.

The 1985 World Championship of Cricket winning Indian team // Getty

Having seen the popularity of day-night cricket at the Sydney Cricket Ground – which was granted the chance to host four matches of the World Championship – since its introduction in 1978, not even the passing of 150 years could dim historic inter-colonial rivalries.

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The programming also recognised a fundamental truth that had emerged in the wake of India's breakthrough triumph at the 1983 World Cup in the UK – that one-day cricket's popularity among some of the planet's most populated nations was a financial goldmine ripe for realising.

The purse offered to the winners of the three-week tournament staged in Australia's two biggest cities was a princely $A32,000 (just under $A100,000 in today's currency) with an imported European car also on offer for the player for the series.

It ensured that – despite the loss of top-flight players to regular 'rebel' tours of South Africa, which remained ostracised from the sporting world due to its race-based apartheid laws – the competing nations assembled squads near to full-strength.

In addition to stars the calibre of West Indies' Viv Richards, India's Kapil Dev, Pakistan's Imran Khan and England captain David Gower, Australia's 14-man squad included Tasmanian Peter Faulkner (father of current allrounder, James) and fast bowler now BBC commentator Jonathan Agnew played his final ODI for England in the tournament opener against the host nation.

But much of the limelight fell on India's spin bowling prodigy Laxman Sivaramakrishnan who, aged barely 17 when he made a spectacular Test debut against Pakistan two years earlier, was to prove a trump card on the expansive Australian grounds with his cagey leg-breaks.

Laxman in action in a 1994 Test match // Getty

Despite the presence of pace bowling peers such as Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Wasim Akram and Richard Hadlee, Sivaramakrishnan emerged as the event's leading wicket-taker and was key to India's path to the final.

They began their campaign with a six-wicket win over arch-foes Pakistan, then comfortable victories against England, Australia and, penultimately, New Zealand in a semi-final where Dilip Vengsarkar and Kapil Dev saw the World Cup holders home with an unbeaten fourth-wicket stand of 105.

It was widely expected the final would be a rematch of the 1983 World Cup Final at Lord's given the West Indies' unrivalled fire power and familiarity with Australian conditions, as they were on their fourth visit to Australia in the past six summers.

Kris Srikkanth bats against Australia in the group stage // Getty

But having been drawn in the three-team Group B that yielded a washed out game against New Zealand in Sydney and a predictably one-sided win over an inexperienced Sri Lanka, the Caribbean kings appeared short of a gallop when they confronted Pakistan in the other semi-final.

A batting line-up boasting Haynes, Richardson, Dujon, Richards, Lloyd, Logie, Marshall and Harper was shot out for 159; the damage done by an unlikely Pakistan pairing of seamer turned Manchester taxi driver Tahir Naqqash (3-23) and opening batsman cum part-time trundler Mudassar Nazar (5-28).

It took Pakistan 46 overs to reel in that total, against the miserly West Indies quicks and on a sluggish MCG pitch, but in doing so the underdogs set up a dream final (for the television coverage's global corporate partners at the very least) against India four days later.

A match that India took hold of early, with Kapil Dev reliving his World Cup heroics to send back both rival openers Mudassar and Mohsin Khan in his initial spell, and then in-form number four Qasim Omar first ball as Pakistan found themselves 3-33.

Kapil Dev is congratulated by teammates in the final // Getty

As they were to do in the subsequent World Cup final at the same venue seven years later, Javed Miandad and Imran undertook the salvage job but another couple of quick strikes by Sivaramakrishnan – narrowly denied a hat-trick when Naqqash took on the fielder at long-on and cleared him by inches – proved decisive.

Even allowing for the slow pitch, huge boundaries (before the days of the fielder friendly ropes) and Pakistan's new-ball pairing of Imran and 18-year-old Akram (who had destroyed Australia by claiming 5-21, with the top three clean bowled), their total of 9-176 was going to be tough to defend.

Javed Miandad pulls in front of India wicketkeeper Sadanad Viswanth // Getty

Impossible, it seemed, when India's clinical openers Ravi Shastri and Kris Srikkanth fashioned a 103-run opening stand that wasn't broken until the 29th over, by which time Pakistan's Rameez Raja had painfully impaled himself atop the MCG's steel picket fence trying to haul down a catch at long-off.

As he had been for much of the tournament, Shastri remained unconquered as India then swept home with eight wickets and almost three wickets to spare.

India cruise the MCG outfield as they celebrate their victory // Getty

The elegant allrounder duly received the keys for the car as player of the tournament, taking his teammates for a spin around the floodlit MCG with doors agape and smiles abounding.

As will be the case at The Oval on Sunday, India had entered the 1985 final as favourites and their win confirmed their standing as the game's best ODI outfit following their earlier World Cup success.

A title that Pakistan were to assume when Imran led them to the ODI game's most cherished prize in 1992, with the experience they gained at the MCG against India that autumn day proving invaluable as they nervelessly overcame England seven years down the track.

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Schedule

1 June – England beat Bangladesh by eight wickets

2 June – New Zealand v Australia, No Result

3 June – Sri Lanka lost to South Africa by 96 runs

4 June – India beat Pakistan by 124 runs

5 June – Australia v Bangladesh, No Result

6 June – England beat New Zealand by 87 runs

7 June – Pakistan beat South Africa by 19 runs (DLS method)

8 June – Sri Lanka beat India by seven wickets

9 June – Bangladesh beat New Zealand by five wickets

10 June – England beat Australia by 40 runs (DLS method)

11 June – India beat South Africa by eight wickets

12 June – Pakistan beat Sri Lanka by three wickets

14 June – First semi-final: England lost to Pakistan by eight wkts

15 June – Second semi-final: Bangladesh lost to India by nine wickets

18 June – Final: Pakistan v India, The Oval (D)

19 June – Reserve day (D)