Disappointment is an unwanted yet frequent companion of all sportsmen and we all walk hand in hand with it at some time during our careers. I certainly came to know it well several times but never as intimately as in the World Cup final of 1983.

What many people overlooked, including many of our players, was the unpredictability of the one-day game. This was immediately evident in our first match at Old Trafford. We played badly and lost by 34 runs against the same Indian team we had beaten so easily a couple of months earlier in the Caribbean.

The Indians had a very modest one-day record and did not get past the first round of the two previous World Cup tournaments but they completely outplayed us. They batted consistently to total 262 for eight off their 60 overs and took advantage of our careless batting against their mainly medium-pace attack to have us 157 for nine before Andy Roberts and Joel Garner saved some of our embarrassment with a last-wicket stand of 71.

We put that behind us as a one-off and romped through to the finals without any further complications, including a second round victory by 66 runs over India at The Oval in which Viv Richards made 119.u00a0Perhaps we should have paid a little more attention to how India reached the Lord’s final in the first place.

They not only defeated us in that opening match but went on to qualify for the semi-finals with a crushing win by 118 runs over Australia in the second round. They then swept past England by six wickets in the semi-final to set up their appointment with destiny. u00a0We could hardly have made a better start to the final.

The weather was grey and overcast in the morning, we had the advantage of bowling first on winning the toss and Roberts quickly removed India’s most dangerous batsman, Sunil Gavaskar, who edged an outswinger to Dujon with only two runs scored. They never picked up after that and were all out for 183.

This should not have been a total to tax a good batting side over 60 overs, especially as the weather had turned bright and sunny. Pakistan had mustered 184 for eight in our semi-final which we knocked off for the loss of two wickets, and even when Australia piled up 273 for six in beautiful batting conditions at Lord’s in an earlier match, we lost only three wickets in making them.

So victory now was treated as a foregone conclusion and each batsman seemed to go out with the attitude that if he didn’t get the runs, someone after him would. They played a lot of airy-fairy shots, trying to get the runs in quick time instead of just batting normally until the Cup was secured. In short, we made the cardinal mistake of underestimating the task.