[Part 1] The Story of Why India Wanted to Host the WorldCup in 1987

And How It Was Put Together Amidst the Chaos

It was June of the year 1983, India had made it to the World Cup finals in England. At that time, India's Union Minister of Education, Siddharth Shankar Rey, was in England and was excited by the opportunity to watch the finals. He called up his Fellow Union Minister, who was also the BCCI President at the time, NKP Salve and asked for 2 tickets for the finals.

Before we get into the details of a seemingly trivial incident, I want you to know that this moment in particular set off a series of chain reactions that reshaped the World of Cricket and one that English cricket administrators would look back on & kick their own arses!

Its funny sometimes how even the smallest of pebbles can create an avalanche. And this particular pebble of an event ultimately brought the entire cricket power structure to its knees.

Anyway, let’s get back to the story:

NKP Salve agreed and quickly asked for two extra tickets from the organisers. Where, he was told, “You have already been sent two tickets, You can use them if you want, but you are not getting any more.”

Imagine that….The President of BCCI, the head of a cricketing board, of one of the largest countries in the world, whose team was in the finals of a World Cup was told, “All you get is two tickets & nothing more.”

On the other hand, the members of the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), the former governing body of cricket, which is now the English Cricket Board, whose chairman would automatically become the Chairman of the ICC, would have pre-reserved seats for the finals.

The irony was that half of the box seats in the finals had been left empty because the high and mighty organisers of MCC didn’t want to watch a final where England wasn't playing, and still, the president of BCCI could not be given 2 Tickets.

That was it; that was the trigger. Mr. Salve later went on to say, that was the day he decided that the World Cup had to be shifted out of England. And he went after it with vengeance.

And just the next day, Salve was on a celebratory luncheon with officials from Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and in a casual conversation with the Pakistani Air Chief Marshal, Nur Khan, Salve said, “How wonderful would it be if we could play the World Cup in our own countries”, And just in that casual conversation, a seed was sown to host the cricket World Cup in the subcontinent.

Furthermore, regardless of India and Pakistan's desire to host, they couldn't just secure the rights on a whim. In fact, England and Australia held veto powers within the ICC, meaning any proposition from India could simply be dismissed by England.

In short, we needed help, & a lot of it!

So first, India, along with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, & Bangladesh, formed the Asian Bloc (a.k.a. the Asian Cricket Council), & thus, what was impossible before suddenly just became difficult.

With this small victory in hand, Salve returned to India along with his victorious team to a felicitation by the Prime Minister of India – Mrs Indira Gandhi

And just like before, in a casual conversation, he described the humiliation he had suffered from the English Board to the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and she had just one question.

Right then and there, in the midst of the ceremony itself, Mr. Salve explained his entire plan to host the World Cup in India.

The Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, then made one single call to Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani and he was summoned to her office the next day, where she again asked just one question

To which Dhirubhai Ambani famously replied,

So, with a blank cheque in his pocket & the Prime Minister backing him, Salve conducted a meeting in Lahore in 1983 with the Sri Lankan and Pakistani officials present, explaining the plan, while Jagmohan Dalmiya, drafted a basic proposal to move the World Cup out of England. And with everybody’s consensus, it was put before the ICC.

The response was thunderous! The ICC was enraged by the sheer audacity of India’s proposal. They raised objections after objections, trying to bury the proposal in legalities.

And it did get buried…

But that was the trick. Nobody on the Indian side expected it to pass. The Idea was to just propose the change and use it as bait to lure one specific fish in.

The second biggest fish in the pond – “Australia”

And it worked!

Written in a proposal was a “rotation policy” for hosting World Cups. That meant, after India, the World Cup would move to Australia. And as they had hoped, the ACB Chairman (Australian Cricket Board) gave into the lure and gave Salve his quiet consent, while stating that they wouldn’t vote against England in an open ballot.

In other words, “We will vote for you in a closed ballot, and more importantly, we won’t veto.”

Securing that key victory, India and Pakistan quickly formed the India-Pakistan Joint Management Committee (IPJMC) with the sole purpose of securing the joint hosting rights of the next World Cup.

Pakistan Air Marshall, Nur Khan, proposed NKP Salve as the President. And together they went after the next goal — ICC voting system.

Now simply put, the ICC's total voting strength was 37.
2 votes each for the eight test nations—that is a total of 16 votes and one vote each for the 21 associate nations.

At the time though, associate teams were seen as the lowest of the low on the food chain.

60% of the ICC’s funding was given to the 8 test-playing teams, while 40% had to be shared between the remaining 21 teams.

Salve had smelled the opportunity here. He went up to the associate teams & offered them 4 times the money that England was offering. That’s £20,000 pounds as compared to England’s £5000 Pounds.

For test-playing nations, the offer was 75,000 pounds, 5 times more than what England was offering. (How we managed to get this money is a story for the next article.)

Amidst this mouth-watering amount of money, the ICC voting began and ended with a 16-12 victory for India.

But before it could be formally announced, England raised objections to the process of voting, saying that they had not seen Pakistani representative Chief Justice Nasim Hassan Shah's vote.

Let me be absolutely clear about what they were doing. They were saying that they couldn’t see Justice Shah because he has a small stature (short in height).

Yup! The officials sitting at the highest post in cricket were resorting to childish name-calling because they couldn’t accept their defeat.

The recount happened with an infuriated Justice Shah standing on the bench with both his hands raised, so that those English officials could see properly this time.

India had won, & they still couldn’t accept it!

For the next 4 years, they found issue after issue to raise objections to. They first pulled the Apartheid card and asked, “Whether India would ban South African-origin cricketers in the World Cup?”

If Yes, then England, New Zealand, and Australia would pull out of the World Cup. If No, then not only would the West Indies pull out, but we would have betrayed millions of Indians living in Africa as second-class citizens.

In a tricky situation, the political acumen of Mr. Salve again came to the forefront where he declared, “Yes, we would ban them, but the ban would come into effect a year after the World Cup.”

They then asked, “How would we play 60 over ODI cricket in India, where the lighting conditions don’t allow it?” We replied, “We can, by making it a 50-over cricket match.”

They said, “You don’t have the broadcasting ability.” We replied that “We are going to overhaul the entire broadcasting equipment system worth Rs 30 crores.”

They asked, “How would teams travel from ground to ground in such a large country?” We replied that “the aviation minister had agreed to reroute all Indian flights according to the World Cup’s schedule.”

They kept going after us, even with just 8 months to go for the World Cup.

They said that they would pull out of the World Cup because of the tension between India and Pakistan.

So, Mr. Bindra, a close friend of Salve and the IPJMC secretary at the time, famously met Pakistan's military dictator at the time, General Zia-ul-Haq, & suggested that the general visit India to break the tension.

And General Zia asked, “Will the Indian PM invite me?”

Bindra replied, “It doesn’t matter. You just come.”

And Zia did!

The tensions between the two countries disappeared for the next one year.

The message was clear to the world.
No matter what was said,
No matter the objections raised,
No matter the hills to climb or valleys to cross,
This time, the World Cup will be played in India! Come What May!

It was brought here because of a plan conceived, strategized, and meticulously executed
Step
by step
by step.

So that never again would one of us, apparently “a third-world citizen,” have to ask and be refused something that was rightfully ours.

The funny thing is that the English board didn’t even know that India had no way of paying the money that it had promised to these countries. Yes, Dhirubhai Ambani had given a verbal promise to Indira Gandhi in 1983, but Indira Gandhi was tragically assassinated in 1984.

The succeeding PM Rajiv Gandhi, did not share the same rapport with Ambani that his mother did.

Nor could he afford to be associated with a rich businessman right at the start of his political career.

So, there was no way they could get the money directly from the Ambanis; they had to find money the hard way. By searching for a sponsor from international corporations for an underdeveloped country with severely restricted foreign market access.

What happened next is an amazing story in itself — Of how the BCCI managed to put it all together, find money, and overcome political & logistical challenges one after the other.

For that, you need to subscribe to this newsletter and wait for the next edition!

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s to come.