India opens Pandora's ODI Box

They were the slowest country to embrace the one-day game, but they more than made up for it in the years that followed.

India's victory in the 1983 World Cup was one of the game's watershed moments, representing the start of a shift in the balance of world cricket towards the subcontinent, as well as marking the moment when one-day cricket truly usurped Tests as the most popular, if not pure, form of the game.

Until that point one-dayers were often seen as secondary to Test series, but a lucrative sideshow nevertheless. England were the early adopters, scheduling short ODI series alongside the regular summer tours from 1972, and New Zealand and, half-heartedly, Australia also tried the format out. It was the advent of World Series Cricket in 1977 that broke the dam, and by the end of the decade everyone was in on the act. Except India.

India's failure to take the format seriously was there for all to see on the opening day of the inaugural World Cup in 1975, when Sunil Gavaskar ground out 36 not out in 60 overs against England at Lord's as his side made no attempt to chase down a stiff target. The BCCI put in a bid to stage the 1979 tournament but it was not taken seriously nor was it serious. At that time, the logistics of such an event in such a massive country were unthinkable.

While the Indian board was willing to play one-dayers away from home, it refused to entertain the idea of series in India. Perhaps inevitably the reason was simply one of finances. Test matches in India attracted massive crowds - 60,000 turned up to watch under two hours of the dead final day of the Calcutta Test in 1976-77- and the board feared if it opened Pandora's box and revealed the shorter form of the game, the public would stop flocking to the five-day games. As it happened, those concerns were justified.

By the time England toured India in 1981-82 the pressure on the BCCI to bow to the inevitable was too great. After two World Cups the Indian public wanted to see limited-overs matches and the English also pressed for some games. So three ODIs were scheduled, dotted around the six Tests.

The tour was blighted by controversy before it had even begun and for a time it seemed it would be cancelled, as the authorities objected to the presence in the England squad of players with South African connections. Even when that was sorted there were ongoing rows over umpiring, Geoff Boycott quit midway through, and the series ended with news breaking of a rebel England visit to South Africa.

England arrived in Ahmedebad late on November 24 after a tiring journey from Baroda but boosted by victories in their opening three matches. No sooner had they checked into their hotel than the England management were at loggerheads with the BCCI officials who handed them the playing conditions.