The first professional cricket match I went to was the 1983 World Cup match in Tunbridge Wells between India, hitherto a negligible force in one-day cricket, and Zimbabwe, who had pulled off a shock win over Australia earlier in the tournament. My father had managed to acquire seats in the pavilion, an achievement shrouded in mystery to this day. India, after successive defeats, collapsed. Properly. 9 for 4, then 17 for 5. I remember being confused at the soundlessness of a caught behind, and the irretrievable grump of Gavaskar, standing in the dressing room contemplating his duck, with a face that could have flattened a mountain.
Then, Kapil Dev launched the counter-attack that changed cricket. 175 not out, an innings of flamboyance, charisma, a moustache that brooked no argument, and primeval six-thwacking power (none of which were the most regular visitors to early-1980s Tunbridge Wells). It was perhaps the last great innings not to have been filmed (due to an industrial squabble involving cameramen, from memory), and is still one of the most amazing sporting feats I have witnessed live. India recovered to 266 for 8 from their 60 overs, won comfortably, and, a week after subsiding to Peter Rawson and Kevin Curran amidst the gentility and rhododendrons of Tunbridge Wells, were hoisting the trophy on the Lord’s balcony and seismically shifting the landscape, priorities and future of the international game.
Aside from the cricket, and the crack and the gasp of Kapil’s heroic strokeplay, I remember also the surging adrenaline of my first request for an autograph. Cricket may have largely forgotten the likes of Iain Butchart and Ali Shah, but they were leviathans to me and my nervously proffered tournament programme that day, as their team sunk to a creditable defeat, as was the teenage Graeme Hick, whose career I subsequently followed with an almost religious zeal simply because he had once scribbled his name down for me whilst not playing in a cricket match in my home town. Gavaskar’s failure-fuelled thunder dissuaded me from asking for his signature, and Kapil was otherwise engaged, but I may be one of the only people alive with both Balwinder Sandhu and Gerald Peckover in his autograph collection.
My father took me home before the end of the match, with Curran still in full flow with the bat but the game in India’s pocket, and an already fervent love of cricket, and its wondrously captivating numbers, had been developed into an incurable, lifelong, benevolent virus.
Andy Zaltzman
Andy is a comedian and author.
Follow Andy on Twitter @ZaltzCricket
Memory added on August 26, 2014
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