25th of June should be declared a Public Holiday

Wednesday, 25 June 2008 17:29

Written by Prashant Tyagi, resident cricket fanatic

What an ungrateful wretch of a nation we are! Twenty-five years ago our un-fancied team traveled to the then mecca of cricket as underdogs who had never won a single game in the previous editions of the world cup and went on to achieve the unachievable. Yet all we do to honor the memories of that eventful British summer is just talk, talk and talk. Every year on this day, we are subjected to endless barrage of newspaper articles and special television shows commemorating the incredible achievement of Kapil's devils. And this year is going to be no better. More newsprint wasted on retelling the story we already know. Is that all that we are capable of doing to memorialize the great victory?

We need to do a lot more.

For starts, our government should declare 25th of the June as national holiday and the day should be officially celebrated as V-day. Of course, there would be some ingrates who would complain that we already have too many holidays and don't need an extra one. To them ingrates I have this to say - go stick your finger up your ass. If we have too many public holidays, we can strike out a few from the list. Why do we need a republic day holiday for? Most of us don't even know what exactly happened on the 26th of January, 1947 (or was it 1948? 1950?) to merit celebrating the day year after year with grandiose, but utterly boring parades that everyone is totally sick of. We can instead have a victory parade on 25th of June every year, with the heroes of 1983 world cup tournament parading the coveted trophy through the streets of Indian cities (yes, yes...the heroes will one day grow old and die. So what? All our mythological heroes are dead too. That doesn't prevent us from celebrating their glorious triumphs, victorious homecomings or the deaths of the bad ass villains they killed to win their trophies)

Yes, my friends, we are clearly not doing enough to immortalize our greatest ever sporting victory. Just 10-page special supplements or 2-hour long television shows are not enough to mark the silver jubilee of an event of such momentous proportions in the annals of Indian sport. The moment during the evening of 25th of June, 1983 at the Lords, when Mohinder Amarnath claimed the last wicket of the formidable windies team to seal the victory for India, is once-in-a-triple-lifetime type of moment, a moment that remains etched in the memory of all Indians who were lucky enough to be born before the advent of the eighties (you got to be at least 3 years old to make sense of what was happening) and fortuitous enough to be near a television set to watch India make history. Every Indian who was alive and had a functioning memory while Kapil's devils were rewriting record books, remembers where exactly he was and what he was doing (mostly parked near their TV sets in their drawing rooms) when Kapil Dev proudly lifted the elusive trophy over his head and the rest of the team poured champagne all over him.

Such moments don't come often and need to treasured and cherished forever, not just by the generation that was fortunate enough to witness history in the making but also by the future generations. But what are we doing to ensure that our children and grandchildren are able to appreciate and value our greatest triumph on world stage? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Such a historic victory deserves a place in school text-books. Our children need to be taught how our magnificent army of eleven, which was not expected to win a single match, surprised and shocked giants like Australia and West Windies before going on to lift the trophy. Our heroes deserve a place in school texts alongside greats like Gandhi, Bhagat Singh & Netaji.

One of the most horrific tragedies that independent India has suffered from was the untimely strike of the BBC crew during that eventful day which changed the course of the nation forever -  the day Kapil Dev scored 175 runs with his bat and turned around an almost lost match at Tunbridge Wells. Sadly due to the strike, the magnificent knock was not captured on cameras depriving generations of cricket-crazy Indians the opportunity to watch one of the most outstanding knocks ever seen. But what is more shameful than the tragedy is the neglect and omission of what needed to be done to preserve the memories of such an incredible innings.

We are just a nation of talkers who just keep talking about that great knock, but do nothing to preserve the memories of that match. The ground at Tunbridge Wells even after 25 years remains as it was - a small nameless club ground of no importance. If we really cared for our cricketing idols, we would have persuaded the English country club owning this ground to upgrade it on par with regular cricket stadiums. We should have also demanded that the name of the stadium be changed to Kapil Dev stadium. Tunbridge Wells should have by now become a shrine for Indian cricket fans, hallowed by association with the greatest one-day knock by an Indian cricketer. But due to our apathy, it still remains just an ordinary patch of green it was, forlorn and forgotten.

Should we allow a strike by BBC staffers to completely erase the memories of that fantastic innings? I say, why don't we make a bollywood movie and recreate the magic of that memorable match? The original footage may not exist, but all the players who played that match are alive to provide ball-to-ball account of the match. We should make a movie, but we won't because we don't really care. We believe in just incessant talking, not in doing anything concrete to immortalize the outstanding achievements of our heroes.

There is so much more we can do to mark the occasion than just talk and write about it.  Since we have failed to win another world cup in the last 25 years and are unlikely to win it again anytime soon, its important that we do everything possible to remind ourself that we are capable of reaching pinnacles of sporting triumphs.

I have many more brilliant ideas popping out of my skull on how we should celebrate this day and what else we need to do to commemorate India's all time greatest triumph, but right now I need to watch the tapes of the final again and relive the excitement and exhilaration of the day I learned about the joys of winning.

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