’83 WC Hero Jimmy Amarnath Opens Up About His Life’s Greatest Game

For the Player of the 1983 World Cup Final, no memory is sweeter than winning his maiden India cap as a teenager.

If you’ve won the biggest prize available in your sport, it’s obvious that people would consider it your greatest achievement.

If that victory was one of the greatest against-the-odds triumph in the history of sport, and one that proved be an epochal moment in your country’s existence, that consideration turns into a given, almost.

But for Mohinder Amarnath – Man of the Final when India defeated West Indies to win the 1983 World Cup and be crowned world champions for the first time – the 25th of June in the summer of 1983, isn’t his best memory on a cricket field.

Instead, the one event unsurpassed in terms of fulfillment for ‘Jimmy’ Amarnath, as he’s fondly known to Indian cricket, is when it all began for him, nearly 50 years ago.