5th November 1987, a day of heartbreak for Indian cricket fans. When the 1987 Cricket World Cup was organized jointly in India and Pakistan the excitement and expectation were sky-high. This was the first time, the World cup was happening outside England and it was the first big multi-team tournament in India. The Indian team was the defending champion and also won the World Championship of cricket in 1985. The team was also stronger on the paper compared to the 1983 outfit and included top-class young players like Mohammad Azharuddin, Chetan
Sharma, and Maninder Singh. Hence when both India and Pakistan qualified for the semifinal and topped their respected group, most of the cricket fans from the sub-continent hoped for a dream Final between India and Pakistan at Eden Gardens.
Pakistan lost their semifinal match on the previous day to a young Australian squad and now it was England’s turn to create an upset. At the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai, India won the toss and elected to field first. They had their spin twins Maninder and Ravi Shastri to restrict England to a moderate score. England lost both their group stage matches against Pakistan and they were generally not good players of spin. However, on that day, Graham Gooch delivered one of the greatest innings in World Cup. He was attacking from the beginning and although the other opener Tim Robinson and number three Bill Athey just scored 13 and 4 respectively England was already on 79 when Athey has dismissed thanks to Gooch. Once the spinners were introduced he started to play sweeps and swept most of the deliveries from Maninder and Shastri to reduce the threat for England. He got a good partner in captain Mike Gatting and the duo added 117 vital runs in the third wicket. Gatting scored 56 and Gooch reached an important
hundred and was finally dismissed for 115. There was a quickfire cameo from Allan Lamb who scored 32 and took England to 254.
With India’s batting power, this was chase-able even at that time. However, Phil Defreitas got the great man Sunil Gavaskar early and there were regular wickets. All the other batsmen got starts but except Azharuddin, no one could take it to a big score. There were five scores between 21 to 31 and when Azhar was scalped by Eddie Hemmings the hopes were all gone. Hemmings went on to take four wickets as India lost their last five wickets for 15 runs.
Eventually, it was a 35-run loss for the team and a massive disappointment for the country.
