The phone rings and a World Cup hero answers: “Hey no tickets for the England game, please understand.” Roger Binny leans back and smiles. The man, who grabbed 18 wickets and was a key member of Kapil Dev's team that won the World Cup in 1983, oscillates between nostalgia's warmth and the current challenge of saying no as gently as possible.
Another call chimes in and Binny deftly switches his cell to the silent mode and walks back to the heady days of 1983 and it is June 25 at Lords all over again inside his cabin at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
“We use the word team-spirit a lot these days, that team had that spirit. We genuinely enjoyed each other's success and that played a huge part in us winning the World Cup. The current team too looks good with a lot of match-winners,” Binny says.
Heading to venues in the bus also heightened a sense of camaraderie. “In England, you just take the team bus, from the hotel to the ground and to the other venues and the bus becomes your home. You tend to get closer and it did help that we were winning matches. In case we were losing then perhaps there would have been silence. I guess repeated success was our winning formula and we had K. Srikkanth, who belted out Hindi songs though he couldn't speak two lines in Hindi during that time. So you had people singing along and some even rolling on the floor with laughter. You need players like that to break the monotony,” Binny says and laughs.
The all-rounder played critical roles in various crisis situations that engulfed the team. At Tunbridge Wells where Kapil Dev scored his epochal unbeaten 175 that rescued the team from a precarious 17 for five against Zimbabwe, Binny, with his captain, stabilised the innings with a 60-run partnership for the sixth wicket. India eventually won that game.
Later in a do-or-die joust against Australia at Chelmsford, the Bangalorean scored 21 and bagged four wickets conceding just 29 runs. “Against Zimbabwe I remember Kapil remaining steady in our partnership. We ran our twos and threes and with the then rule of having four fielders inside the ring, we had enough gaps to get our runs. He later played his natural game with Syed Kirmani and they scored about 100 runs in the last 10 overs! The greatest pleasure personally would be my performance against the Australians at Chelmsford — we had to win that game and I am glad I did well,” Binny recalls.
In the final, Binny nailed West Indian captain Clive Lloyd and India was well on its way to rewriting history. “Lloyd had suffered an injury in the previous over and Kapil came to me and said, ‘He is stuck in the crease and cannot move, just bowl a little away and force him to drive.' I did precisely that and Lloyd was gone. It does help to have a captain who is a bowler but most bowling-captains tend to under-bowl themselves as they want to be fair and give every one a chance.
Kapil was an aggressive captain, even when Mohinder Amarnath was bowling, he kept a slip,” Binny quips. June 25, 1983 was not an easy day for the team though we tend to see it through soft-focus while posterity adds its infinite charms.
“After we were bowled out for 183, we knew we had messed it up. The mood was poor in the dressing room and we had a long lunch break and that meant we had more time to brood. But just before we left, Kapil made a speech. He said, ‘The match is not over yet and if we can be bowled out for 183 we should try and bowl them out for less.' That fired us up,” Binny says before his present role of being the vice-president at the Karnataka State Cricket Association and that beeping phone ensures that nostalgia slips into deep freeze.
