The ninth wicket

India were 140 for eight when Syed Kirmani walked out at Tunbridge Wells.

Twenty overs remained. Kapil Dev had passed seventy.

What the ninth wicket did

They were not separated. The stand was worth 126 and India finished on 266 for eight, which means that nearly half of India’s total was scored after the eighth wicket fell.

Kirmani made 24 not out from 56 balls with two fours.

Kapil made about a hundred of the 126, and everybody knows that. What is less often followed through is what the other end had to do to allow it.

Full scorecard: India v Zimbabwe, Prudential World Cup, Tunbridge Wells, 18 June 1983 →

Fifty-six balls

In a sixty-over innings with twenty overs left and one wicket standing, the non-striker has one job, and it is not scoring.

He faced fifty-six deliveries. Rawson, Curran, Butchart, Fletcher, Traicos. A green pitch at a festival ground, and eight team-mates already out for 55 between them.

He got out none of those times. That is the entire contribution and it is the reason the innings that people remember exists at all.

Take his wicket at any point in those twenty overs and India make perhaps 180. Zimbabwe chase it. India go home before the semi-finals of a World Cup they won.

The seven who went before

Sunil Gavaskar 0. Kris Srikkanth 0. Mohinder Amarnath 5. Sandeep Patil 1. Yashpal Sharma 9. Roger Binny 22. Ravi Shastri 1.

Thirty-eight runs between the seven. Three of them caught behind by Dave Houghton. The pitch was doing enough that Zimbabwe used five bowlers for twelve overs each and never needed a sixth.

Madan Lal made 17 and was eighth out at 140, which brought Kirmani in.

What he was doing there in the first place

Kirmani was India’s wicketkeeper for a decade and among the best of his generation. A week after this he kept wicket in a World Cup final at Lord’s and was named wicketkeeper of the tournament.

He batted at ten that afternoon because India’s order had collapsed to 17 for five and Kapil had reorganised everything behind him.

What cannot be checked

Everything about how the two of them played it.

Whether they discussed a plan between overs. Whether Kapil was farming the strike or Kirmani was refusing it. Whether Zimbabwe were bowling at the wrong man on purpose, which is what a captain does when the set batsman is the danger and it patently did not work.

The BBC technicians were on strike. There is no footage of any of it. There is a scorecard that records 175 not out and 24 not out and a partnership of 126, and the arithmetic of who faced how many balls, and nothing else at all.

What he did a week later

India beat England in the semi-final and West Indies in the final. Kirmani kept wicket in both and was named wicketkeeper of the tournament.

In the final he caught Faoud Bacchus off Balwinder Sandhu. It was the sixth of the ten wickets West Indies lost while chasing 184, in the most consequential collapse in Indian cricket history.

Which of the two is remembered

Kapil’s innings is one of the most famous in Indian cricket and nobody saw it. Kirmani’s 24 not out is in exactly the same position, minus the fame.

The difference between the two men on the day is that one of them scored at 126 per hundred balls and the other at 43. The similarity is that both survived twenty overs, and only one needed to.

••••••

No. 2 in The Other Guy, a series of 24.

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