CRICKET WORLD CUP, 1983 - THE IDEA THAT WE CAN WIN

Yes, even that was not there when Kapil Dev, himself only 24, led a bunch of devil-may-care no-hopers right up to the summit of world cricket. For India, it was the equivalent of the Moon Landing-except unplanned and unimagined. What changed after that? Everything.

- BY SUNIL MENON

Mohinder Amarnath, unrushed even at the cusp of history, in that slow waltz run-up of his, like a glacial sheet that's only contemplating melting. Michael Holding, his gazelle-like elegance frozen in the headlights at the crease. Umpire Dickie Bird, pert as ever, raising his finger to 12 o'clock. You could call it a sporting moment. But there was an epochal quality to this victory of the underdogs. Bird, as charming a symbol of the old world as you want, was signalling the birth of a new world order. The moment didn't just mark time, it cut time into a clear 'before' and 'after'. 'Before' was a long night of the mind. Thirty-seven years ago, India had dismantled the political part of it. But it was on June 25, 1983, at Lord's— when a swarthy, sinewy fruit of the loam called Kapil Dev led India to the one-day World Cup—that the defeatism instilled into a colonised people was finally ended. That India awoke to mental freedom.