At the end of the season, just as I’m packing my kit away for the winter, I see an advert circulating on social media: “Skilled cricket players needed. Casting feature film based on 1983 cricket World Cup. Players to represent West Indies, England, Australia and Zimbabwe teams.” Perhaps I shouldn’t hide away my whites just yet, I think.
I send the talent agency a headshot and a brief summary of my playing ability, and a week later I’m asked to Lord’s to audition for the part of Chris Tavaré. To prepare I’m asked to “have a look at some online footage of how he bowls, bats, catches, celebrates, etc, so you have an idea of his personality traits and style”.
Sports Promotions UK
(@SPromotionsUK)Skilled Cricket Players needed.
Casting Feature Film based on 1983 Cricket World Cup.
Players to represent West Indies, England, Australia & Zimbabwe teams.
Email headshot, experience, contact number, location & height to [email protected]#castingcall #cricketers pic.twitter.com/DrszWAqWLo
I was three years old when the 1983 World Cup took place and I remember Tavaré’s contemporaries Mike Gatting, David Gower and Allan Lamb better than him. But we have a similar height and build. Tavaré’s “style of play was characterised by long periods at the crease and a relatively slow rate of run-scoring”, Wikipedia says, and I can do that. Mostly I grind it out when I play for Pacific CC in the North East London League.
Among Tavaré’s most tedious innings was a score of 35 runs in six and a half hours at Madras. “As [Ian] Botham brought the crowd to its feet, Tavaré did his utmost to make them sit down again,” wrote Marcus Berkmann in Rain Men. “Here was dullness personified, a walking, twitching anaesthetic.”
In one of the first YouTube videos to appear when I type Chris Tavaré the Kent captain is interviewed alongside his opposite number, Botham, at Lord’s after Somerset have just won the 1983 NatWest final, which followed the World Cup. He says getting “Tav” out for 39 off 80 balls was a big moment as it opened up an end for Somerset to bowl at. Tavaré is gracious in defeat.
The Guardian and Observer’s own Vic Marks was the player of the match in that final, taking three for 30 from 10 overs, including that of his friend Tavaré. I ask Marks for advice before my audition. “Chris spoke slowly and deliberately in a deepish voice – and not that often, which led briefly to the predictable nickname of Rowdy in early England dressing rooms,” Marks says. “But he had a neat sense of humour and a tendency toward self-deprecation. I always felt he was a much better player than he thought. He was very popular. Botham and Bob Willis liked him a lot – as did everyone else, especially his contrasting opening partner in 1983, Graeme Fowler.”
Tavaré would make 58 (off 116 balls) in a 115 partnership with Fowler in a seven-wicket victory against Pakistan at Old Trafford in the World Cup. “Chris had the neatest of cricket coffins and upon dismissal he would carefully return his kit there. From his demeanour it would be hard to tell whether he had made nought or a hundred,” Marks says. “He was a cautious man in several ways – he travelled to India with his own pillow (often coveted by others in some of the hotels) and pyjamas and later on he took to wearing a gumshield when batting, which meant his calling when running between the wickets produced a muffled, barely comprehensible sound, which often meant ‘Come on then’.
“We all know Chris’s reputation but I can promise you he played some of the most destructive innings in one-day cricket, especially at county level for Kent and then Somerset and the odd one for England. In this format he stood tall and occasionally wandered down the wicket before the ball was bowled. So it wasn’t such a daft idea to have him in the World Cup squad.”
Another YouTube video shows highlights of Fowler and Tavaré sharing an opening stand of 69 against India in the semi-final at Old Trafford. Tavaré’s stance is very side-on. He clips the ball through midwicket for an all-run four. He later plays an almost identical shot off the bowling of Kapil Dev, which this time crosses the boundary. This is followed by a cut for four through point. He plays and misses outside off stump to Roger Binny before edging behind to be caught by Syed Kirmani for 32.
When I turn up at the Indoor Cricket Centre at Lord’s in November 2018 I find I’m in a group of six players all auditioning for parts, though I’m the only Tavaré. One chap has to fill the big boots of Botham. Another is auditioning to be the Australian Trevor Chappell and says he has struggled to find much footage of him other than the notorious under-arm bowling incident of 1981.
When I’m asked to speak to camera in the nerves of the moment I forget to talk like Tavaré. Then I’m asked to bowl my left-arm spin, which I don’t think will help my chances of being cast as Tavaré because a) he wasn’t left-handed and b) he didn’t bowl in the World Cup. Still, I’m asked to deliver a ball and sledge the nonexistent batsman – not necessarily Tavaré-like behaviour, I think. But then other roles are up for grabs. I’m asked to bowl another ball, appeal loudly and celebrate. Because the ball I bowl has hit neither a pad nor an edge, I forget to appeal straight away, which is embarrassing.
Next it’s time to bat. The bowling machine spits a ball at me and I try to drive but manage only to squirt away a bottom edge. The following three deliveries produce a similar result, though, in my defence, I haven’t faced a bowling machine for more than 10 years. I have more success against four back-of-a-length balls, punching them into the off side off the back foot. Then I face four short balls. We’re supposed to pull them but I make poor contact and the ball goes behind square.
The second and third balls produce similar, unspectacular, results. The last ball I am supposed to strike and then celebrate as if I’ve hit the winning runs but I spoon it and when attempting to celebrate struggle to take my helmet off as the strap stays wedged beneath my chin. So, all in all, it’s not been the most convincing of auditions. No surprise, then, I never hear back from them.
“The Indian team had already been cast a long time back but in the UK we were looking for players to represent England, Australia, Zimbabwe and West Indies,” the film’s UK line producer, Cyrus Patel, tells me later. “We wanted the action to be authentic.” The cast is made up of actors in the main roles with body doubles for the cricketing action. It took eight months to find the West Indies side as the search for them was extended from the UK to the Caribbean. The great fast bowler Malcolm Marshall is played by his son, Mali.
“The calibre of cricketers cast was extremely high. They’re all accomplished players because we wanted the action to be as close to international standard as possible,” Patel says. He tells me Tavaré’s part was taken by Phil Lowe, a cricketer from Loughborough who plays for Newtown Linford in Division One of the Leicestershire and Rutland League.
When I track down Lowe, he describes what it was like to be involved in the film. “I had to go to London for training and a wardrobe fitting. We spent a couple of hours in the nets at Lord’s replicating footage from the semi-final between England and India. There were certain shots Tavaré played that I would have to replicate and I needed to perfect his technique before filming started.
“I was told I needed to grow a moustache and let my hair grow as long as possible. I’d never grown a moustache before but luckily by the time filming had come around I’d managed a reasonable one. But I had to wear a wig because there was insufficient time to grow the back and sides long enough, which wasn’t ideal during long, hot days of filming in the summer.”
He spent a week in August filming at Stowe school in Buckinghamshire, a couple of days at Osterley CC in London, then at the Nevill Ground in Tunbridge Wells and, finally, at Lord’s. “They were long 12-13 hour days spent on set but we had a lot of fun,” Lowe says. “We filmed all of the cricket action from the semi-final on a regular cricket pitch that was surrounded by green screens, so that they could CGI the [Old Trafford] stadium and crowd into the shots. It was a fantastic experience to be involved in a big budget film and get to work alongside huge Bollywood stars like Ranveer Singh [who plays Kapil] and [director] Kabir Khan.”
It was at the Nevill Ground Kapil scored 175 not out after India were initially reduced to nine for four by Zimbabwe. No original footage exists of this record-breaking innings because BBC cameramen were on strike. But Patel says they tried to recreate it as accurately as they could.
“Apart from the Nevill Ground all the other venues have changed considerably since 1983 so we made extensive use of CGI to take the viewer back in time,” he says. “But Lord’s couldn’t have been more welcoming to us and over four days in August 2019 we were able to film in the dressing rooms and in the Long Room.” Some of the street and hotel scenes were shot in Glasgow which, in Patel’s words, “has the feel of 1980s London”.
Going into the tournament India’s previous World Cup record was dismal. In 1979 they had failed to win a game and in 1975 had won one, against East Africa. West Indies, on the other hand, had never lost a World Cup match, winning the tournament in 1975 and 1979. “It seemed like only Kapil believed India could win it,” Patel says.
In the final, India were bowled out for 183 in 54.4 overs and West Indies had the champagne on ice. But Clive Lloyd’s team were then skittled for 140 in 52 overs. They were later to find Kapil knocking on their dressing-room door and asking for some bottles of fizz as the Indian camp had not anticipated victory.
Kapil finished the tournament with 303 runs in eight innings at an average of 60.60 and a strike rate of 108.99. He took 12 wickets at an average of 20.41 and a miserly economy rate of 2.91, and caught Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd in the final – the first spectacularly so.
“Never did India think they would get to the final, let alone win it,” Patel says. “The 1983 World Cup final was a match that transformed a nation. It is one of those perfect underdog sport stories.”
The film, simply to be called ’83, had been scheduled for release on 10 April before the coronavirus pandemic intervened. And now Patel is unsure whether footage of Lowe batting will make the final cut of India’s success story. Tavaré was there but it was Kapil and his men who stole the show.