Come June 25th and India will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its historic World Cup win. The tournament which turned Indian cricket from nobodies to somebody is still fondly remembered in most households in India, with the image of Kapil Dev and party holding aloft the cup being beamed into our living rooms on any and every possible occasion.

When we talk about all Indians being proud of the achievement of the '83 heroes, there is one body however that prefers to concentrate on petty disputes over national pride. The BCCI is in a soup over how to approach the celebrations considering the association of some of those '83 heroes, most notably the Captain of that team Kapil Dev, with the rebel ICL. Not surprisingly, they have acted in the most undignified manner possible!

As far as honoring the '83 team is concerned, Kapil Dev might be associated with the ICL or the Australian cricket Board; it is really no business of the BCCI. Even if the ICL were considered a rival of the BCCI (the BCCI prefers the term 'rebel'), an association with it still doesn't take away from the man what he achieved 25 years back, and that is captaining Indian to a victory that changed the face of Indian cricket ever since. I think it is crystal clear to everyone that the BCCI is not honoring the team for their current professions or contributions but for ones long past; there is no way that anything Kapil Dev, Sandeep Patil or anyone else does today is going to change their past contributions.

The decent option for the BCCI would have been to issue a grand invite to the '83 world cup players, organize a gala reception, give a round of applause to the guys who have contributed in the BCCI's importance being what it is today, and in all, make the players feel good about winning the World Cup, even if it was many years back. Hey, it did arrange an open bus parade for the Twenty-20 World Cup winners recently, didn't it? Once the celebrations are over and the hangover has passed, the BCCI can really go back to its original position of having nothing to do with the ICL or its representatives. That would have been the most dignified, if not the most ideal, way of handling the situation with Kapil Dev and the ICL amidst the World Cup victory's anniversary celebrations.

Instead, after months of media speculation and news about the players themselves arranging their celebration independently of the BCCI or any of its representatives, the BCCI is now making noises about how it was always going to honor the 1983 heroes. In fact, from reports, a compromise formula seems to be on the cards whereby the BCCI and the players will join together at Lords for the celebration which was initially going to be a players-only celebration organized by the enterprising Sunil Gavaskar. No one believes the BCCI's sincerity in its statement about wanting to honor the players and the way things have happened is definitely going to leave a sour taste in the mouth, even when those at the party are sipping their champagne and making speeches.

The players wanting to hold the celebration at Lords is understandable, one it being the venue of their triumph and second being the obvious enjoyment of a trip abroad with the family. What is not understandable is the BCCI "joining" the players in that celebration at Lords. Cricket in India is a religion whether anyone likes that or not; the victory of the 1983 team will be celebrated not just by those 15 players who formed part of the team but by most Indians who will tell each other where they were and what they were doing on that day when Indian cricket shone at its brightest.

While it is fine for the BCCI to go to Lords for the party and whoop it up with the players, their reluctance to organize something here in India on the same lines smacks of poor taste. The Lords party is mainly because of the Gavaskars who acted of their own free initiative. That doesn't relieve the BCCI of its responsibility; after all they do say that they manage cricket in India; they have to put aside personal issues for celebrating something the whole nation cherishes.

When it comes to the BCCI, however, nothing seems too cheap!

Author's note - While the BCCI is said to be organizing a function in New Delhi to honor the '83 heroes, it is the author's belief that the same is done purely from an eyewash point of view, since the BCCI has been criticized from many quarters for its stand on the celebration.