Kapil recollects asking gangster to get out of dressing room ahead of Sharjah Cup in 1986
Underworld don Dawood Ibrahim entered dressing room of the Indian team and offered the players a car each if they beat Pakistan in the final of the Sharjah tournament in 1986. In the startling revelation, former skipper Dilip Vengsarkar on Monday claimed that Dawood was introduced to the team members as a “businessman” by famous actor Mehmood. He added that Dawood was asked by the then India’s captain Kapil Dev to walk out of the dressing room.
“Actor Mehmood was in our dressing room. Kapil Dev was not in the dressing room at that time because he had gone out to address the Press conference. Dawood was introduced by actor Mehmood,” Vengsarkar said at a function in Jalgaon.
“No one recognised him but I had seen his photographs. Mehmood introduced him to us as a big businessman from here. Mehmood said he wants to announce a prize for us. He said, “If you beat Pakistan tomorrow, everyone will get a car. Jaywant lele was our manager then,” he said, adding that the offer was rejected by the team.
The match will be best remembered for the last-ball six hit by Javed Miandad off Chetan Sharma that helped Pakistan win the trophy. However, Kapil Dev made a slightly different claim. “Yes, I remember a gentleman walking into our dressing room in a game in Sharjah and wanting to talk to the players,” Kapil told a Hindi TV channel.
Incidentally, former BCCI secretary Jaywant lele, who died last month in Baroda, had also mentioned the incident in his book, I was There —Memoirs of a Cricket Administrator.
“But I asked him to leave the dressing room immediately as outsiders were not allowed. He listened to me and then walked out of the dressing room without saying anything. later, someone told me he was a smuggler from Bombay and his name was Dawood Ibrahim. Beyond that nothing happened,” he said.
Kapil Dev said he wasn’t aware of Toyota cars being offered to the players. “No such offer came to my knowledge then. If Dilip is saying it now, he would know more than me.” In one of the chapters in his book, he had written: “If the Indian team becomes champion here, I shall present a Toyota car to each team member, including officials, at their doorsteps in India.”
Dawood, reportedly, had told lele and the then India team manager Dyaneshwar Agashe to meet the wealthy industrialist in Sharjah. “As bad luck would have it, India lost the tournament. Australia were declared champions on the basis of a higher run rate, as Australia, England and India earned equal points! After the results were declared most team members were not in tears, but that man was!” he wrote.
“After a long gap, we came to know that the man who met us in Sharjah in 1987 was Dawood Ibrahim, the alleged mastermind of the dastardly Mumbai blasts in 1993,” lele wrote.
Sharjah’s cricket charm began to wane in the 1990s when match fixing scandals broke out, and although nothing was ever proved, sides started to move away. In 2001 the Indian Government banned the national side from playing there. Between April 2003 and February 2010, the venue hosted no international games.