Saturday June 25 of 1983 was a free afternoon for the cricketers of the Lancashire League - a legacy of the competition's emergence from the Victorian work regimes of the 1890s. Had any of them switched on BBC1 to catch the day's live cricket broadcast - the small matter, parochially speaking, of a World Cup final - they would have seen no fewer than five players who had appeared as professionals in the league two summers earlier. West Indies' quicks Andy Roberts and Michael Holding were the hired help at Haslingden and Rishton respectively, while the Indian trio of Madan Lal, Man of the Match Mohinder Amarnath, and skipper Kapil Dev turned out for Enfield, Lowerhouse and Nelson. The league's connection with the two line-ups didn't end there, either. Clive Lloyd (Haslingden) and Larry Gomes (Nelson) had enjoyed two dominant seasons apiece there. In 1978, his third and final year playing for Littleborough in the neighbouring Central Lancashire League, Joel Garner had a game as stand-in pro for Burnley, taking 8/37. Vivian Richards would later spend the 1987 season at Rishton, arriving for his debut in a helicopter. And less than 24 hours after Kapil lifted the trophy on the Lord's balcony, off-spinner Kirti Azad turned out in a derby game for Lowerhouse, picking up where he'd left things in early June. That 1981 campaign wasn't Amarnath or Lal's first dip into Lancashire League waters. After a season with South Shields in the Durham Senior League, Mohinder signed for Lowerhouse in 1977, living with his brother Surinder, professional at their cross-town rivals, Burnley: th'Amarnath derby. The Lowerhouse skipper that year, Steve Gee, became fast friends with 'Jimmy,' attending his wedding reception in Dewsbury after he had tied the knot with Inderjit, a doctor who would work six-month placements in the UK while her husband played club cricket and in the Minor Counties competition for Durham. The Amarnath boys were following their father's footsteps in east Lancashire, with Lala, India's first Test centurion, having spent the final two pre-War years at Nelson. By 1981, Lal and Mohinder were solid, reliable, occasionally devastating (and relatively cheap) club pros in their thirties who had already faced off in the Lancashire League on half a dozen occasions (Lal's Enfield had won it in 1977), and neither had played a Test in over a year. Conversely, Nelson's 22-year-old swing-bowling all-rounder was an emerging superstar of the game, with 32 Test appearances, a Test hundred against the West Indies and eight five-wicket hauls already under his belt, as well as sitting in third place in the ICC Test bowling rankings. Big things were expected of Kapil at the club whose 17 league titles made them the Lancashire League's most successful. Kapil had put pen to paper at Nelson the previous August, staying overnight with Steve Gee in Burnley (they, too, had become friends after a week-long stay with the Amarnaths in Lancaster had coincided with Kapil turning up in the back of an MGB GT sports car, his leg in a brace following knee surgery, having escaped the boredom of hospital in Birmingham). Meanwhile, enterprising officials from Limavady CC, near Derry in Northern Ireland, had got wind of Kapil's presence in England and flew a delegation across the Irish Sea to sign him up for their three-day North West Cup final against Sion Mills that weekend. After his pyrotechnics in a practice session forced the Limavady president to resituate his new black Mercedes, Kapil took 3/63 from an unbroken 30-over spell and then scored 85 in a match that was ultimately forfeited by Sion Mills. The allrounder enjoyed a couple of wine miniatures and signed some pieces of kit before heading off, back toward the bright lights. That winter, he played three Tests each in Australia and New Zealand, his 5/28 with a heavily strapped thigh at the MCG, as India defended 143, securing India's historic 1-1 result. Then, on May 6, he married Romi Bhatia, having proposed to her by suggesting they have a photo taken together in front of a billboard carrying one of Kapil's endorsements, "so that we have something to show the kids." All of which delayed his arrival in Lancashire until the middle of May. "We were aware of that before," says Nelson skipper, Chris Hartley. "It wasn't a case of him letting us down. He'd made it clear when he signed." By then, Amarnath and Lal had already been through five rounds of matches, the second of which ought to have seen them play each other but was instead snowed off. Nelson, meanwhile, had three wins - David 'Bumble' Lloyd deputising for Kapil in the first - and two no-results, leaving them in second place. The pro's belated debut came at Ramsbottom, a nailbiting one-wicket win to which Kapil contributed 4/59 and a breezy 42 secured with a last-over six by Steve Calderbank. The following week, at home to high-fliers Rawtenstall, Kapil took 6/47 - his best figures of the season - off a full allotment of 17 eight-ball overs, as the visitors mustered just 92 all out. It proved plenty, though, as Franklyn Stephenson's 5/20 hustled Nelson out for 52. It would be their only defeat in the first half of the campaign. The next outing saw Kapil contribute 27 and 5/48 in a two-run win over Church, the visitors collapsing from 109/4 to 125 all out as the pro snared the final wicket in his final over. The next two games were abandoned, although not before Kapil had made a breezy 39 then a 48-ball 75 in the derby match at Colne, including a six that "cleared the bowling green, the house - the first time it had ever been done - and ended up by the roundabout," recalls teammate Ian Clarkson. He followed this with 90 and 12, then 68 and 69 not out in back-to-back wins over Accrington. With seven wins, one loss and five no-results from their opening 13 fixtures (it was four points for a win, one for bowling out the opposition, one for a cancelled game), Nelson were five points clear at the top at the halfway point of the season. Everything looked rosy. Well, almost. "There were a few at Nelson disappointed that Kapil was only seen at the club at the weekend," reflects Hartley. "I used to say: will we see you for practice this week? It would occasionally happen, but not a lot. He spent some of his time going to Europe, as a sort of honeymoon. The thing was, pros could be useful at nets, but we didn't get anything out of him other than on match days. I don't want to be too critical. We got on well and he was a brilliant player, but you felt he was going at 80 or 90 percent a lot of the time." Some of Kapil's early-season weeks had been spent at Northamptonshire, for whom he made a County Championship debut in June, followed by a couple more appearances in July, picking up only six wickets while averaging 35 with the bat - unspectacular stuff, perhaps, but ideal midweek practice, the Nelson members might have thought, for the serious stuff up in Lancashire. Meanwhile, Amarnath's Lowerhouse - the only one of the league's 14 clubs never to have won it - were one place below halfway in eighth, while Lal's Enfield were tied for tenth. Lal had two half-centuries for the season - he would finish with nine, each of which provided an earnings boost from the collection tins taken round the sizeable crowds - while 'Jimmy' hadn't yet reached that landmark. He had bowled with customary economy on the damp early-season pitches, but only had one five-bag: the 7/60 that engineered victory over Rawtenstall. However, he had taken 4/40 in a two-wicket victory over Enfield (Lal making 43 out of 93 all out), while top-scoring in the chase: b Lal 33. A run of four straight no-result games preceded Lowerhouse's mid-season double-header against Rishton. Which is to say, against Michael Holding - a slightly funky Michael Holding, too, who had already suffered the ignominy of being biffed (well, top-edged, duck-hooked and smeared) for four sixes by IT engineer Ian Osborne of Church. Holding was also using his weekly column in the Lancashire Telegraph to grouse about damp wicket ends - some unavoidable, some tactical - and the lack of 'walkers' among the local batsman (who, you may have thought, would be highly motivated to get the hell out of Dodge). "In the game at our place he hit me on the chin and first slip caught it," recalls Lowerhouse's current Chairman, then number three batter, Stan Heaton, at the time working as a gravedigger before joining the police. "Obviously, I didn't walk, because I hadn't hit it. He started to have a pop at me, but then stopped when he could see the blood trickling down my chin." Heaton was eventually run out for 25, while Amarnath was bowled by Blackburn Rovers centre-back John Waddington for 15. However, thanks to Pankaj Tripathi's 47, Lowerhouse scrapped their way to 134/9, with Rishton's chase falling five short. Heading into the return game, Holding had heard that a bullish Tripathi - rather foolishly, some might argue - had questioned the Jamaican's speed-gun credentials. Suffice to say, it wasn't a brainiac move. Lowerhouse were blitzed for 67, with Holding's figures - and remember, these are eight-ball overs - a death-whispering 13.2-6-13-9. Seven were bowled, two caught behind. Tripathi was hit in the face second ball and retired hurt with a broken nose, resuming to have his castle demolished for just three. To his credit, Amarnath stood firm with 43 not out, two thirds of the total and, at that stage, June 27, his highest score of the season.