The match between India and Zimbabwe in the ICC World Cup 1983 at Tunbridge Wells is one of the most iconic games in Indian cricket history. This was a really important game in India’s World Cup campaign, and Kapil Dev proved his class to the world on that day.
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Batting first, India were down and out at 17-5. Kapil has revealed many times that he had the habit of taking a shower before batting, and he had no idea that his chance will come that early. The Indian captain stepped onto the field where he had nothing to lose, but nobody knew what was about to get unfold.
Kapil took the onus on himself, and he played a record-breaking knock of 175* runs in just 138 balls with the help of 16 boundaries and 6 sixes. He got some support from Roger Binny (22 runs), Madan Lal (17 runs) and Syed Kirmani (24 runs) in the lower order. India won the match by 31 runs in the end.
Kapil Dev 175 Zimbabwe
There is no video footage of Kapil Dev’s iconic innings against Zimbabwe, and there are a lot of rumours behind the same. A lot of people believe the fact that the host broadcaster was on strike on that day, but this is not true at all. The main reason behind that was lack of resources.
A total of 4 matches were played on the very same day, and the BBC could just broadcast two of them due to resource crunch. They decided to cover England vs Pakistan & West Indies vs Australia matches on that very day. It was certain that the match of West Indies cannot be compromised, whereas England was the host nation.
However, the fans got to see a glimpse of that knock in the movie ’83’ where Ranveer Singh played the part of Kapil Dev. The fact that all the original players themselves gave training to the actors, there must be integrity in the match shot in the movie. Kapil has although says that he has no regrets that there are no video highlights of the match.
