GOING into the 1983 World Cup there was hardly any pressure on us. No one gave us a chance! There were so many great teams taking part in the tournament, no one would have dared bill us as the favourites.
There weren't many teams better than West Indies back then. Just look at the XI -- Gordon Grenidge, Desmond Haynes, Clive Lloyd, Vivian Richards, Malcolm Marshal, Andy Roberts and Michael Holding -- it was a scary side. The best thing about he Indian side was that we were no afraid of anything.
We had just come back from a tour of the West Indies in 1982, where we had managed to defeat them in a few matches. So there couldn't have been a more tougher preparation for the World Cup. There first two World Cups had been disastrous for us. Going into this tournament we decided to take it match-by-match. We knew that we'll be able to beat Zimbabwe but it was the win over West Indies and Australia that got us much needed self-confidence.
It wasn't until the semifinals that we believed that we could go all the way but once we managed to beat the hometeam England in the semis the team started to believe that we could go all the way.
Heading into the final we always knew we had a shot if we could put up some sort of a total on the board. The ball always seamed around in English conditions and we had bowlers in me, Mohinder Amarnath, Kapil Dev and Balwinder Sandhu to exploit these conditions.
It was good that we managed to bat-first and set a total because if West Indies had batted, with the firepower that they had they would have definitely posted something over 400! But chasing in a big final is never easy and they found that out as pressure built up.
It took us a while to realise what we had achieved. More importantly the victory means so much for Indian cricket. Before the 2011 World Cup, players like Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and MS Dhoni always said that they wanted to replicate what we had achieved.
That's what the win achieved in 1983 -- it gave the nation of cricketers to something to look upto and something to aspire for. Now the coming generation will look up MS Dhoni and his boys and say that we want to be world champions like the 2011 World Cup-winning side.
(Madan Lal took 17 wickets in 8 matches for India at the 1983 World Cup, and was joint second-highest wicket-taker with Sri Lanka's Asantha de Mel. He took 4/20 in the group game against Australia. Madan Lal also scored 102 runs with 27 as his highest score. He spoke to Devadyuti Das)
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