The 1983 crew that received the World Cup bought Rs 1 lakh every for his or her efforts. There’s fairly a narrative about how that occurred, and there are, as typical, many variations of it. That is mine.
Our dressing room at Lord’s was like a fish market, with barely room to maneuver as we ran in, elated and screaming with pleasure after Mohinder Amarnath bought the final wicket. Those that have seen the video of that match could have seen how crowded the balcony of the dressing room was as that final West Indies wicket fell. Inside, it was much more crowded as folks, primarily Indians, whom most of us had by no means seen earlier than, had been clapping and patting gamers on the backs.
The BCCI president then was Shri NKP Salve, a minister within the Central Authorities cupboard on the time. He was one of many nicest individuals one may ever hope to fulfill and ever prepared to assist the gamers. Because it occurred, there was only one bottle of champagne within the dressing room to have fun the win, and the skipper, Kapil Dev, poured a beneficiant dose into Shri Salve’s glass and informed him that he ought to announce a prize for the crew members.
We had been a squad of 14 gamers and a crew supervisor. Shri Salve had a couple of BCCI dignitaries with him, and after consulting them, he introduced Rs 25,000 for every member of the crew. If reminiscence serves me proper, we had been to get Rs 2,500 for that marketing campaign, so mainly, we had been going to be given 10 instances that quantity as a reward for successful the World Cup. Clearly, we wished a bit extra, and to do this, we wanted to ply Shri Salve with a bit extra champagne. However there was just one bottle, the contents of which had been shared with simply over 100 folks in that altering room.
One other couple of bottles had been procured, because of the generosity of one of many dressing room-crashing well-wishers, and Shri Salve’s glass was replenished. Then the dressing room attendant got here and mentioned that the Lord’s authorities had left a few crates of champagne within the West Indies altering room in anticipation of their win. So Kapil and Madan Lal took braveness of their fingers and went to the dressing room, the place Clive Lloyd, morosely however generously, permitted them to spirit one crate to our dressing room.
Regardless of our greatest efforts to fill Shri Salve’s glass with a number of cheers, he wouldn’t commit greater than he had introduced. He was a sensible man and knew the BCCI didn’t have the cash to provide to the gamers. Then Raj Singh Dungarpur mentioned he would request the one and solely Lata (Mangeshkar) didi to have a live performance for the crew, and from the proceeds, every participant would get Rs 1 lakh. The live performance raised far more than Rs 15 lakh, and the excess was saved by the BCCI. However we didn’t thoughts as we knew the monetary scenario of the BCCI on the time.
Now, after our boys received the Champions Trophy, the BCCI introduced a whopping Rs 58 crore for the squad and the help employees and choice committee. In July final yr, after the stirring victory within the ICC T20 World Cup, the BCCI introduced Rs 125 crore for the squad, help employees, and selectors. That is really implausible, because the Board, which is now awash with funds, is displaying its appreciation for the efforts put in by all people and rewarding them generously. The BCCI can also be letting the gamers maintain the prize cash that the ICC introduced for the winners, which can also be an excellent quantity every.
After the ICC T20 World Cup win and the Board announcement of prize cash, the then-coach Rahul Dravid, ever the crew man, refused to simply accept greater than his fellow members of the teaching employees and, in reality, shared it equally together with his colleagues.
It’s been a fortnight for the reason that BCCI introduced the Champions Trophy rewards, however we haven’t heard something from the present coach on whether or not he will even do a Dravid. Or is it that Dravid, on this occasion, just isn’t an excellent function mannequin?