How often does a déjà vu hit you? I recently experienced one following the 2022 Asia Cup. On 3rd September 2022, when there was an audience poll (Source: Republic World) conducted on the winning chances of all the Super Six teams in the Asia Cup, in an obvious fashion, India secured the maximum votes and unsurprisingly, Sri Lanka received no votes. Cut to 11th August 2022, the latter trashed the Asian cricket giant Pakistan and won the Asia Cup 2022! It lifted the trophy by defeating one of the most powerful Asian cricket teams.
However, this is not the first time that a least-expected team has surprised its opponents and shocked the entire world with its stellar performance. We have a similar story very close to our hearts. During the 1983 World Cup, which was held in England, the then Indian Cricket Team captain Kapil Dev explicitly expressed their not-so-timid approach towards their journey through a very bold media interaction. He stated they had arrived in England to win the World Cup amidst the cricket giants like West Indies and England. But upon hearing this, his statement became a piece of great amusement among all the reporters. But as we know, the rest is history.
Hence, there are some striking similarities we can draw between the Sri Lankan team of the 21st century and the Indian Team of the 20th century. Some of them are:
Not the ideal favourites
The Indian team of ’83 was not expected to win a single match in the 1983 tournament, forget about being favourites of the spectators. This was to an extent that they were even denied The Lords Stadium passes, assuming that they can never reach the finals. Similarly, in Asia Cup 2022, India and Pakistan were already foreseen to be playing the finals and Sri Lanka was not even on the radar of the so-called ‘powerful’ teams to watch out for.
Not a dream journey
Even though India had an unbelievable start to the 1983 World Cup by defeating the then ‘inevitable’ West Indies, they lost some important matches and if it were not for Kapil Dev’s record-breaking knock against Zimbabwe, India might not have had the chance to continue their World Cup journey. Similarly, Sri Lanka didn’t have a great start to their journey as they lost to Afghanistan. The real story started when they bounced back against Bangladesh and went on to win every single match after it!
Defending low totals
Sri Lanka had to defend 170 runs against Pakistan, a team best known for their explosive batting order. But it was Pramod Madushan’s terrific bowling, along with the contribution from all other bowlers that made the Lankans win the match by 23 runs, taking in all the 10 wickets. During the ’83 finals, even India had to defend an extremely low score of 183 runs against West Indians who were known to win matches single-handedly. But it was again the bowlers that struck all the 10 wickets of West Indies, helping the team to bag the trophy.
Beating against the odds
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) of 1983 was not what we see today. It didn’t have enough funds to provide all the assistance to the players and was doubtful whether or not India could go to England. Likewise, we are all aware of the devastating humanitarian crisis that Sri Lanka is currently witnessing which disallowed them to host the Asia Cup in their country.
The Indian Cricket Team was reborn in the ’83 World Cup, which compelled the entire cricket fraternity to look into their capabilities. It smashed the windows of perceptions that the Kapil’s Devils didn’t belong to just another small cricket-playing nation. The Asia Cup trophy clinched by Sri Lanka is also a sign to all other cricket-playing countries that Sri Lanka is here not only to win hearts but also accolades. This is hopefully the start of a new dawn and the beginning of Sri Lanka 2.0 on the cricketing field.