1992 - The World Cup of COLOR

As Australia won the World Cup in 1987,  they were the strong favourites to win the next edition held in their own country and New Zealand.  New Zealand was also one of the likely semi finalists since they would play most of the matches at home and not many players of the World Cup had played in cold wintry conditions of that country.  This was also the birth of pyjama cricket as it was called , the advent of coloured clothing and lights adding to the excitement of watching the 50 over game.   This also marked the official end of white clothing in one dayers , after which it became evident that the game had to be played on holidays and weeknights  to get more people to watch the game.   The top 4 teams would eventually qualify for the semi finals after each team would play the other once.

India had a good team but were distinctly unlucky in this edition.   They had a good attack comprising Kapil,  Srinath , Prabhakar and spinners in Ravi Shastri , Venkatpathi Raju with Tendulkar bowling his seam ups and spinners in case of necessity. They are poor starters and it proved with the match against England going to the wire and India had lost it by 9 runs despite some good bowling and decent batting.  I distinctly remember this match watching it on  a B&W TV and Kapil and Botham face to face.  Botham was opening the batting and bowling for England and Kapil was doing likewise for India in the bowling department before Azhar decided to ask him to open the batting for the rained off match against the SL at Mckay. It was unfortunate since India was widely tipped to win this one for sure.

The matches which India expected to win were all getting shortened and the absurd Duckworth Lewis rule was playing havoc with the rain affected matches adjusting targets disproportionately.  India was unlucky against Australia where we saw splendid batting from Azhar and Manjrekar .  Manjrekar was never a one day batsman but he showed that batsmen orthodox batsmen can also can make their presence felt in the shorter game.  The most crucial moment in the match came at the end when Srinath and Raju were involved in a mix up which resulted in Australia winning.  India never managed to get above the 250 mark in any match and that proved the difference in the matches against NZ and West Indies.   The match against Pakistan was truly interesting and it showed how the team could play some good cricket against a strong opposition and eventual winners. Tendulkar showed some great maturity in scoring 50 of those runs and getting India to a winning total.  The Indian swing bowling was a revelation and they managed to get Pakistan all out which made many a fan in India happy though we never won anything of relevance in the entire competition.

New Zealand on the other hand were progressing extremely well in their matches and they had a dibbly, dobbly , wobbly seam attack in Watson , Larsen, Latham and Harris.  Opening the bowling was Dipak Patel bowling off spin when the restrictions were on and  an unqualified success to say the least. They also started pinch hitting with Greatbatch in the opening slot who would go after the bowling in the initial stages when the ball was hard and new and the field was up.  He was a great success compared to Kapil and Botham and England persisted with Botham at the top till the final while India had abandoned the concept very soon.  South Africa playing their first World Cup after readmission were playing hard cricket and showed the world the importance of fielding in the limited overs format where the opposition totals were reduced by atleast 20 runs each match.  Allan Donald was steaming in for almost every delivery and it was difficult for  batsmen to get bat on ball.   Many can remember the Jonty Rhodes run out of Inzamam falling on the stumps at full stretch.

The semi finals line up read South Africa vs England and Pakistan vs New Zealand and again the world thought that it would be New Zealand vs South Africa in the final. However the rain had other ideas in the SA vs England match which reduced the equation to an absurd 22 runs off 1 ball and SA was knocked out.  This was a lucky world cup for Imran's Pakistan , they had a match rained off against England where they most certainly would have lost scoring an insipid 74 on the whole.   The match against New Zealand was another lucky escape with Miandad and Inzamam playing some good innings.  Inzamam was supposed to be equal to SRT and he tried to prove it in this innings which was measured and was built on calculated assault on the weaker bowlers.

The final was England vs Pakistan with England appearing in the final many a time but still had not won the World Cup ,  Pakistan were the team with momentum and had luck coming their way too.  They had the brilliance of Wasim Akram, the swing of Aaqib and the spin of Mushtaq Ahmed.  The raw talent was being channelised extremely well by Imran who was keeping the team together through the World Cup and they were believing in themselves like India in 1983.  249 was not a great total posted by Pakistan and their bowlers had to win it for them.  England were losing wickets steadily in the chase until Fairbrother and Lamb started slowly progressing to the target. But once Wasim got Lamb and Lewis , the die was cast in favor of Pakistan and Imran's team were worthy world champions.  Nobody in the remotest dreams including Imran would have believed that he had a team which was called that.

The moments to take home from this World Cup were colored clothing and white balls,  Raju and Srinath mixup in the match against Australia,  Dipak Patel opening the bowling ,  the class of Martin Crowe's batting and captaincy,  Imran's captaincy,  Jonty Rhodes run out of Inzamam,  Akram bowling Chris Lewis with a peach of a delivery and of course last but not the least the Duckworth Lewis rule which robbed South Africa of a place in the World Cup final on debut. 

It must be said that there were 2-3 young players  making their presence felt for their teams, one was the great SRT ,  Brian Charles Lara for  West Indies and the third Inzamam ul Haq for Pakistan.  These were the youngsters who would excel for their respective countries in the future.