Long Room celebrations

Last year at the ICC chief executives committee meeting, I was leaving the venue that is next to the Long Room and found a table-plan for that evening's charity dinner. Going through the list, I found there were some famous names who were to attend the dinner and as I checked the dates, it was, thankfully, in June, when India won the World Cup 24 years earlier. It struck me that it would be fantastic to celebrate the silver jubilee of that fantastic win with a dinner at the Long Room.

I’d been somewhat upset on seeing a significant amount of grass on the Lord’s wicket... Out of disgust, I even told some of my teammates that the conditions just weren’t fair... The state of the wicket also put paid to all the planning we’d done the previous day. .. Soon enough, though, I realised that we had to make the best of the conditions... We didn’t have a choice... Then, with the ball swinging like nobody’s business, we felt we’d definitely be in with more than a shout that afternoon. We had a ball, as it turned out.

“Come on, Sunil, it’s time you score runs”. That’s exactly the then captain and India’s greatest all-rounder ever Kapil Dev did in the 1983 World Cup edition to Gavaskar. Then the retort: “Come on, maan, if you feel I am not good enough to play, drop me as you have done in the league matches.” A visibly startled Kapil was taken aback by the reaction but fortunately England captain Bob Willis slipped into the dressing room to invite Kapil to come out for toss to save further embarrassing moments for these two cricketing greats.

So I sat in the press-box at Lord’s, with a glass of red wine at hand, and devoured the offending words, risking poisoning by newsprint but glad nonetheless to cleanse my soul. I was actually genuinely delighted for India, and began to realise that probably my words had been penned in the hope that they would now take their task seriously. Why else would I have attempted to do a discreet banghra of my own in the hotel foyer? The pleasant tailpiece to all this came with a letter from my correspondent: he referred to me now as “a gentleman and a sportsman”. He had not even expected his first letter to be published. He even apologised for the intemperate tone of some of his words, and invited me to join him for a drink if ever I was in New York. I still hope that day may come. A decent drink is hopelessly spoiled when mixed with printed paper.