Instant replay: Roger Binny looks back on his role in the 1983 World Cup win

The former India bowler was talking about the day India won the 1983 World Cup, that unlikely triumph that changed Indian cricket forever. Binny had an impact in every single match leading up to the trophy, picking crucial bunches of wickets almost on-demand, including the all-important one of West Indies captain Clive Lloyd in the final at Lord’s.

“Throughout the World Cup my biggest strength was Roger Binny,” Kapil Dev told me once. “All I had to tell him was ‘Roger, pitch the ball up.’”

When news came in this week that Binny, now 67, will be the next president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), these words and a long, delightful conversation I had with the man came flooding back to me.

“Mr Binny, you don’t know me, but I am writing a piece on 1983 and I was hoping you could give me some time.” I had cold-called him, expecting a rejection.

“Call me Roger,” he said, and for the next hour regaled me with vivid stories from the World Cup. He was charming, funny, self-effacing.

“You see, we only really had one genuine fast bowler at the World Cup,” Binny began, “and that was our mad captain, Kapil Dev. I call him mad because he never knew the concept of giving up. Anyway, Madan (Lal), (Balwinder Singh) Sandhu and I were gentle seam and swing people. But this was England! Conditions were overcast all the time. It was perfect for us…

“You remember the first match? Against West Indies? The game was called when they were 67 for two (chasing 262) due to bad light and rain. Everyone needs a little luck, and that was ours.

The next day, which was the reserve day, when we went back to the Old Trafford grounds (in Manchester), there was massive cloud cover and the ball was swinging a lot! I got (Viv) Richards and Lloyd with swinging balls they didn’t know how to deal with.”

Binny talked about rooming with Dev throughout the tournament.

“We had no way to communicate really,” Binny said. “The best I can say is that Kapil’s English was better than my Hindi. But then there was (Krishnamachari) Srikkanth who was under the impression that he spoke excellent Hindi, and that he was a great singer. He would go around seriously singing Hindi songs in a ridiculous accent, with completely wrong lyrics, and everyone would be in fits of laughter.”

(When I told Srikkanth about this some days later, he said he was perfectly aware of his bad Hindi and worse singing but sang anyway, to keep the pressure off everyone.)

“I think he still thinks his Hindi is flawless and his singing is great,” Binny retorted.

One thing Binny picked up as Dev’s roommate was that the captain loved his orange juice. That knowledge came in handy at a critical juncture. After a great start to the tournament, India had lost two straight matches and were playing a must-win game against Zimbabwe when the team suffered their infamous batting collapse. The captain walked out to bat with the scorecard reading 9/4. Binny joined Dev at 17/5.

“Kapil was totally calm of course,” Binny said. “Came up to me and said, ‘We have many balls to play, no need to take risks, let’s play for 30 overs and take singles and twos’. So, we put the ball in the gaps and ran for our lives. Both of us were fast bowlers, so we were fast runners.”

Binny fell before lunch, and realised that the embarrassed team was planning to hide from their captain when he came in for the break. He suggested that they place a glass of orange juice on Dev’s seat. The captain came in at lunch to find an empty dressing room, drank the juice, and went back out to play one of the great ODI innings of all time.

There’s a lot more to say and not enough space, but I will leave you with Binny’s recollection of the moment India won.

“I was fielding at the mid-wicket boundary,” Binny said, “and it was like being in the stands. I knew the crowd would be on me the moment we won. But my focus was on grabbing one of the stumps before they all disappeared. So I blanked out the crowds, and the moment the last wicket fell, I ran as fast as I could towards the pitch. I must have been pretty fast, because after (the bowler Mohinder) Amarnath, I was the next one picking up a stump!”