day of the match with Gundappa Viswanath and their third wicket partnership contributed 316 runs. At Port of Spain next year, he was struck on the head by Malcolm Marshall and forced to retire. However, he came back to bat in the same innings and scored a fifty. After a few ordinary performances, Sharma was picked for the Indian team for the 1983 World Cup. In the opening match of the tournament, he top scored with 89 as India caused West Indies their first defeat in a World Cup match. The West Indies had been favourites to win at odds of 66–1. Sharma very much won the day for them, and he recounted that he had a volley of marks on his chest from Malcolm Marshall's short-pitched bowling. A Bollywood film, 83, was made about this World Cup triumph. The part of Marshall was played by Marshall's son, Mali. In the semifinal against England he again top scored with 61 – a flick over square leg for six off a near yorker from Bob Willis being a memorable shot. He was part of the Indian team which won its maiden World Cup tournament which eventually came during the 1983 campaign. He was also the second leading run scorer for India during the 1983 World Cup with 240 runs in eight matches. Retirement Back home, he failed completely against the touring Pakistanis. In the three-day match for North Zone against the West Indians at Amritsar, he hit Viv Richards for four consecutive sixes. But two more failures in the international matches against them ended his career. He appeared in four one day matches against England the next year and scored more than ten in one of these matches. Sharma left Punjab and joined Haryana in 1987–88. He spent another two years with Railways. At the age of 37, he was still good enough to score hundreds in consecutive matches in 1991–92. After he retired from the game, he became an umpire for a time, and was also a selector for the Indian national team. Chief selector He served as India's national cricket selector from 2003 to 2006. During the tumultuous period of Indian cricket between 2005 and 2007, he supported Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly over the coach Greg Chappell and was also ousted from the selection committee in 2005. After being removed from national selection committee prior to the home