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India made me eat my words ; 1983 World Cup win

Have you ever eaten your words?  You head me truly, can anyone eat his own words? David Firth was an English cricket writer and the founder editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly Magazine which started its publication in 1979.

The story beings prior to the start of the 1983 Cricket World Cup; Firth looking at the poor performance of India in the 1975 and 1979 World Cups wrote an article in Wisden asking the Indian team to qualify for the World Cup with the associate nations. He gave no chances to India entering the second round and had written to leave the tournament. Firth declared that he would "eat his words" if India won the tournament.


The 1983 cricket team of India led by Kapil Dev had a dream run at the tournament and defeated the mighty teams of England, Australia and West Indies to win the tournament.

PR Man Singh, Manager of the then 1983 World Cup team was a subscriber of Wisden Cricket Monthly. He had not read the June issue wherein Frith wrote about India very poorly. A few months back when he read the article, he immediately wrote a letter to Frith that India was World Champions.

He reminded him of his promise. A perfect gentleman he (Firth) was, he had a piece of paper in his mouth and had a picture taken. The September 1983 edition of the magazine ran a copy of Singh's letter along with a photograph of Frith with a piece of paper in his mouth, captioned, "India made me eat my words".

Source: Assorted from the Internet

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