The innings nobody filmed

India needed to beat Zimbabwe at Tunbridge Wells to stay in the 1983 World Cup. Kapil Dev won the toss and chose to bat on a green pitch at a ground that normally hosted Kent.

Peter Rawson bowled the first over. Sunil Gavaskar was leg before to the second ball of it for nought.

Seventeen for five

Kris Srikkanth was caught by Iain Butchart off Kevin Curran for nought. Mohinder Amarnath was caught behind for 5. Sandeep Patil edged Curran to the wicketkeeper for 1. India were nine for four.

Yashpal Sharma made 9 before he was caught behind too. Seventeen for five, and India's World Cup was over inside an hour unless somebody did something.

Kapil Dev came in at number six. There is no footage of what he did next.

What he did next

He and Roger Binny put on 60. Binny went at 77, Ravi Shastri at 78. Madan Lal helped him add 62 more and was out at 140 with twenty overs left.

Syed Kirmani came in at number ten. He made 24 not out from 56 balls. Kapil made everything else.

The ninth-wicket stand was 126 and it was unbroken. India finished on 266 for eight. Kapil was 175 not out from 138 balls with sixteen fours and six sixes.

Rawson and Curran took three each. Zimbabwe used five bowlers and every one bowled his full twelve overs. There was never a sixth option. For the first hour there was never any need for one.

Full scorecard: India v Zimbabwe, Nevill Ground, Tunbridge Wells, 18 June 1983 →

The rest of the day

Zimbabwe went after it. They were 113 for six and still going, and Kevin Curran made 73 before he was caught at 230 with the ninth wicket down. They needed 37 more with one wicket standing and were all out for 235 with three overs unused.

Madan Lal took three for 42. Kapil bowled eleven overs for 32, took a wicket and held two catches. India won by 31 runs and won the tournament a week later.

What it was worth

Another defeat and India were out.

The side that beat West Indies in the final at Lord’s a week later spent that Saturday morning at seventeen for five, at a festival ground in Kent, about ninety minutes from going home.

The strike

BBC technicians were on strike that day. The match was not televised and no cameras were present.

There is no moving footage of the innings. There are a handful of photographs, a scorecard, and the memories of a few thousand people who were at the Nevill Ground on a Saturday in June.

Every other landmark innings of the era survives as video. This one survives as testimony, and testimony was collected mostly by journalists who were not there either, from players with a stake in how it was remembered, years afterwards.

What does survive is unusually precise. The scorers recorded balls faced for every batsman in both innings, so it is possible to say that Gavaskar lasted two deliveries, that Kirmani’s 24 took 56, and that Kapil struck at 126 in a format where nobody struck at 126 in 1983.

The Nevill Ground holds a few thousand people and is used for a festival week. It was a Saturday.

Which means that the entire visual record of the most famous one-day innings ever played by an Indian consists of whatever was retained by a few thousand people who had come out to a county outground in Kent expecting an ordinary afternoon, and who were not asked about it in any organised way until it was far too late for the answers to be worth much.

What cannot now be established

What the innings actually looked like. Whether it was controlled or a slog. Whether Zimbabwe bowled badly at the end or well throughout. Whether 175 in those conditions was as extraordinary as the number suggests or more extraordinary still.

The scoreboard survived perfectly: 175, 138 balls, 16 fours, 6 sixes, 126 for the ninth wicket. Everything about that afternoon that a person would actually want to know is hearsay, and always will be.

••••••

No. 5 in Mysteries, a series of 11.

NextThe 443 nobody let him finish