Victory for India and Apachen

It is the 25th year anniversary of India’s Prudential cup win and every channel, radio and TV is milking it for TRPs. I saw people like Balvinder Singh Sandhu and Sunil Valson for the first time in 25 years on several channels. Such bonhomie and camaraderie, Gavaskar was actually praising Kapil’s captaincy. And Kapil in his brand of English was saying, ‘We were not having any belief in our team ability that we will victory over West Indies’ (or something close to that).

One of the radio spots celebrating the win asks, ’where were you’? Well, I was in the hall of our rented house watching the match on our first black and white TV. India had won against Zimbabwe and England and we were in the finals, Deccan Herald carried huge black and white pictures, it had a write-up that traced Roger Binny’s ancestory back to England. P, S and I were sitting outside and loudly contemplating on where to watch the finals. Dad then said, ‘We will buy a TV today’. You see it was easier to get Apachen to understand the importance of cricket to an Indian boy. I didn’t have to sell my soul to algebra like I did to get my bat. We went to Brigade Road to an electronics store where the current Lee showroom is. I remember the names of the TV brands – Weston, Bush, Dyanora, Uptron, names that have disappeared like sparrows from Bangalore. For my father the choice was limited to his patriotism, ‘Keltron’, he said, ‘made in Kerala’. Not that I was old enough to understand that our purchase of a lowly black and white TV would suddenly spur the electronics industry in Kerala.

We placed the order and returned home. I waited and waited for the delivery man. He came and nailed the antenna on the terrace sliced a few wires and connected it. Hey presto, we had hazy images split across the middle on the grey screen. We sat up and watched India batting, not good enough for a world cup final and then there was Sandhu’s inswinger that got Greenidge. Murphy’s law was in existence back then as well, and the match was interrupted for news and a play in Tamil (Bangalore had programmes relayed from Chennai, and I doubt Ekta Kapoor was even born). Back to the match and the Windies were six down and we had missed Kapil’s famous running catch to get rid of arrogant Richards. I still remember Amarnath getting 12th man Holding and running towards the pavilion. The World Cup was ours, people were out on our street discussing ‘the inticate planning’ behind the win.

Even in that victory Apachen found something to be proud of – the marvellous malayali engineering behind the Keltron TV. He also stated proudly ’Sunil Valson is a Malayali’.

Valson did not play a single match in the tournament, as for his malayali origins I still don’t know if it is true.