







A certain game of cricket was being played between India and West Indies on this very day 35 years ago. Off the last ball of the 52nd over, Mohinder Amarnath bowled a slow ball on the stumps, it struck Michael Holding on the pads and the umpire raised his finger. This was the moment when India arrived on the international cricket scene. The story of this triumph, however, began 16 days before, when the 3rd Cricket World Cup commenced.India's road to glory was a tough one, being placed in a group alongside two time defending champions West Indies and their biggest rivals, Australia. Zimbabwe was the fourth team in the group. Each team played the others in their group twice, before the top two teams moved along to the group stages.In their first match, they faced West Indies, who were yet to lose a World Cup game till then. Batting first, they put a total of 262/8 in 60 overs, with Yashpal Sharma and Sandeep Patil playing great knocks. While chasing, none of the West Indian batsmen could score a fifty. Three wickets each for Roger Binny and Ravi Shastri paved the way for a shocking Indian victory.India won their next game with relative ease, beating Zimbabwe by 5 wickets while chasing 156. However, they lost their first game against Australia by 162 runs despite captain Kapil Dev picking up a 5 wicket haul. Another loss against West Indies in their next game meant that India were now in a must win position for the next two matches.Placed in such a precarious situation, India began their next match against Zimbabwe on a horrible note. They were reduced to 17/5, with five of their best batsmen already dismissed. Gavaskar, Srikanth, Amarnath, Sandeep Patil, Yashpal Sharma.. All were back in the pavilion. This was the time, when Kapil, like a true captain, rose to the occasion like the champion that he was. Scoring at a great pace, he scored a fascinating 175* with only his lower order batsmen for company. A clinical bowling performance saw India win the match by 31 runs. In a virtual quarter final match against Australia, India's fast bowling duo of Roger Binny and Madan Lal picked up 4 wickets each, as India reached their first ever World Cup semifinal.India faced England in the semifinal, but these last two victories had uplifted the team's confidence to a whole new level. They bowled like the champions they would go on to be, with Captain Kapil picking up 3 wickets, and Binny and Amarnath taking 2 wickets each. Chasing 214, Yashpal Sharma and Sandeep Patil once again joined hands to take India to victory, after an integral contribution from Amarnath as well. This all round performance by Amarnath won him the Man of the Match award, an award he'd win in the final as well, becoming the first player to win the Man of the Match awards in the semis and the finals too.The final of the World Cup was yet another face off between the champions West Indies and dark horses India. Coming to the final on the back of three successive wins, India might not have been the favorites, but they were strong contenders now.India lost the toss, and were asked to bat first against an imposing West Indian bowling lineup. With Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall among their ranks, no opposition batting lineup would be strong enough to handle them. Same was the case with India that day, as only Srikanth and Mohinder Amarnath showed any resistance, and India were bowled out for a paltry 183. Defending 183 in 60 overs, that too against a batting lineup consisting of Sir Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd and Gordon Greenidge was next to impossible. But such is the case with dark horses; they always fight back against all odds to succeed in grand fashion.Balwinder Sandhu gave India a great start by bowling Greenidge for 1, and the stage was set for the mighty Richards to walk in to bat. The dominance with which he normally played would've taken West Indies to a third consecutive World Cup win. That was not to be, however. He skied the ball off Madan Lal's bowling, and for a moment, it felt like he was safe. A passionate Kapil Dev, however, ran like the wind, and after what seemed like eternity, he caught the ball, sending his team and the fans in a frenzy.This wicket was not only a massive blow for West Indies, but it also gave the Indians a sense of belief... Yes, they could do it. Wickets at regular intervals meant that West Indies were always lagging behind, and then came the moment of glory. Amarnath trapped Holding leg before the wicket, and India had lifted the World Cup, something not even a crazy cricket fan would've predicted before the start of the premier tournament.This glorious victory not only paved the way for India to get onto the international cricket scene with a bang, but it also opened the gates of international cricket in the subcontinental nation. The next Cricket World Cup would be played in India, co hosted by India and Pakistan. This was the beginning of a huge revolution in India, as the fans now believed that their team had the potential to win big tournaments. India went on to host the 1987 and 1996 World Cups, before eventually becoming the first team to win a World Cup on home soil in 2011, under MS Dhoni.Right from Sachin, Sindhu, Azhar in the 90s, to Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag, Srinath in the 2000s and Gambhir, Kohli, Dhoni and Yuvraj later on, all these superstars made a huge impact on one day cricket. But the wheels of this revolution had been put in motion on that fateful day, 25th June 1983, when a bunch of relatively unknown cricketers believed in themselves, and clinched the magnificent piece of glory at Lord's, the home of cricket. These were India's first ever cricketing heroes, the first in the line of many more to come...