Its been long time I have written something so I thought I would write something which cant be forgotten in Indian cricket history. Talking about 2 moments, one the best moment in Indian cricket and the other the worst moment i must say, which occurred in the same week.. I was school going kid of age 12 when the below matches took place and had to bunk the class to watch semifinals, which I remember like it happened yesterday. - Shashi Kiran
It was in 1996 in the month of March when India had to face SL in WC semifinals in Calcutta (now Kolkata) after beating Pakistan in quarter finals few days (Saturday March 9th (if I am not wrong)) before in Bengaluru. What a match that was in BengaLuru starting with Sidhu firing all the cylinders to score those valuable 93 after losing Sachin, couple of boundaries towards covers of Mustaq Ahmed from Sidhu was amazing. And let's not forget the little cameo from Jadega at the end of the innings by smacking the ball all over the park to such an extent that in one single over he scored around 26 runs of Waqar and those sixes of reverse swinging yorkers were treat to watch :)... India end up making some valuable 280+ runs on the board... enough to defend? Yes infact there was a sigh of relief on the faces of Indian team which lasted only till the Pakistan innings started. Sohail and Anwar started attacking right from the very first ball and scored some 83 runs of first 10 overs. Srinath fooled Anwar with a slower one who ended up hitting the ball straight up in the air and kumble taking a good catch at midwicket. So far it was all Pakistan’s way and whole stadium was as silent as a sleeping child and then they erupted with huge roar when Anwar fell and for I believe the noise didn’t cease till the match was over. Next wicket was of sohail's which will remain in the mind of cricket fans for a very long time in the history of cricket. It was delivery from Prasad which was in good length and gave enough width well outside the off stump which any left hander would love to hit, so did Sohail after dancing down the track hammering towards the square boundary for a four. Then he gestured prasad which literally meant "this is what you expect from me and go and fetch the ball", Prasad had to just return back only to send down the next ball which was a leg cutter, which Sohail made complete mess out of it by exposing all the stumps trying to hit towards off side and before he could realize, timber behind him was already uprooted and Prasad erupted and was fuming and showed the way to Sohail in a anger and it was treat to watch (nevertheless Prasad was fined for this gesture later):) as rightly said by Wasim (akram) bhai, this was in fact the turning point of the match where Pakistan was placed really well scoring at over 7 runs per over with loss of 1 wicket and needing little more than 5 per over and more importantly they had very good middle order with likes of Ijaz ahmed, Salim malik, miandad, inzamam, latif. Had Sohail not showed that aggression and attitude it wouldn't have created such pressure and didn’t allow India to come back to the game at all. Why on earth Sohail wanted that drama when he had played such a beautiful innings? If continued it would have been a cake walk for Pakistan. Well when all the god's in India were conspiring for India's win, who can stop it? :).
Next few overs made Pakistan to put on breaks on their scoring rate and as a result required run rate went up. Ijaz and Inzamam fell quickly scoring few runs and wasting some balls. I must say it was Miandad and Malik who spoiled the Pakistan’s party by wasting too many balls unnecessarily which created too much of pressure and in the mean time India took a good control of the match. Latif looked threatening with some lusty blows of Raju, but ended up getting stumped by Mongia of raju.
It was all over for Pakistan here and India had to complete the formality of completing the quota of 50 overs. India eventually won by some 38-39 runs. Sidhu was the man of the match and I vividly remember that it was Devegowda, who was the CM of Karnataka then who handed over the MOM trophy to Sidhu :).
Well next one would never erase from our minds for long time for wrong reasons unlike the above one. It was on Thursday, March 13th (what a number-13?) semifinals between India and Sri Lanka and never in anybody's dream it would have appeared that it would be a worst day in Indian cricket. Azhar, then the Indian captain won the toss and much to everybody's surprise he chose to field first rather than opting to bat and pile up some good total and defending it, given that India was not well known for chasing batting second during those days. Since there was some movement which helped bowlers initially he had to go with that option and rightly he did. First over of the match was a dream over for India and rest of the match was very dim and at the end it was curtains to India's show in WC :(... well let's come back to first over, as usual Srinath opened for India and with the opening pair like Kuluwitharana and Jayasurya well known for their exploit during first 15 overs it was challenge for any bowling side to stop them. Because this pair had shown the world throughout the world cup on how to exploit the fielding restrictions in first 15 overs and it played major role in their world cup triumph that year. very second ball of the Innings, Kaluwitharana was down the wicket and tried to smash Srinath over deep gully but end up giving a simple catch to manjrekar at third man and atmosphere was electrifying in the stadium and endless celebrations on and off the field and 4th ball of the same over Jayasurya tried a similar shot as Kaluwitharana and this time he found Prasad at third man. It was dream moment with 2 dangerous batsmen getting out in very first over. Full praises for Azhar for choosing to bowl first from all ends. But srilanka had Gurusinha, Mahanama, De silva, Ranatunga, Tilakaratne in the middle order which looked too dangerous a gang to thrash any opponent. Even Gurusinha didn’t last long and within a few minutes’ co-hosts and guests in India were already 3 wickets down for 30 odd runs with De Silva looking very strong and positive at other end. As a kid I always wanted to see India’s batting so I would want them to have enough runs to score and I was wondering “what if srilanka gets out within 100 runs? Oh no! There won’t be any fun watching India batting, at least Indian team needs some runs to score, let Lanka score few more runs”, how innocent it was of me :). Well, talking about Aravinda, he never looked bogged down with wickets falling at other end. He literally smashed Kumble into pieces by hitting all over the park. Having scored some 60+ runs, he had hit some 13-14 boundaries. He kept SL run rate intact. Fall of him brought in Ranatunga who joined with Mahanama and scored the runs freely in singles and twos. I must say its India’s relax mood made SL to come back to the game, India never seemed like putting pressure after 3 quick wickets in the beginning. Mahanama reached his fifty and was retired hurt and was taken out in the stretcher. As usual Ranatunga was hanging around at one end and as expected and as he did always he took a help runner which made his life easy further with Tilakaratne at the other end took pressure of him by rotating strike. Having lost 3 quick wickets in the beginning the way they came back, thanks to Arvinda de Silva for his aggressive cricket and free scoring runs, was amazing. Vaas playing a little cameo at the end SL reached a decent score of some 250+.
Well well well, now when India came out to bat somewhat there was some nervousness seen on the faces of India batsmen. Why not? After all it was a big game, semi finals. Much was expected from Sidhu with the form he was against Pakistan days before, but he was out for single digit score giving catch to Jaysurya in covers of Chamidna Vaas. Then came Manjrekar (whom I admired as a kid) who hanged around with Tendulkar and in fact it was good partnership of some 90 runs. Seeing Tendulkar and Manjrekar batting together is a treat to watch with similar stature, similar batting techniques and similar helmet and pads they wore, it was difficult to differentiate who's who sometimes :).. Sachin came down the track and misread the ball of jaysurya completely and quick work by Kaluwitharana behind the stumps made Sachin short of crease when the score was 98 and it was 98-2 then.
Azhar walked in swinging his head either way like he always did and he faced few balls and was “Duck” out caught and bowled of Dharmasena. All hell let loose from now on. 99-3 was the score read on the board. Kambli came in and after 3-4 runs Manjrekar tried for a paddle sweep of Jayasurya and missing the ball which went and disturbed the wooden sticks behind him and he was bowled and had to walk out. Score was 100+ for 4. Now here they sent their new found pinch hitter Srinath and god knows why do they wanted to send him, he came and tried to hit the ball as if he was facing the 49th over and in too much excitement he went for an unneccary 3rd run and found himself short of crease and walked back, it was 5 for 110. Next one was Jadega, who never looked he was here to play cricket with his lethargic looks. It was like an action reply of Manjrekar's wicket, tried for a paddle sweep before he could realize what is happening he was bowled out. Jayasurya again doing the trick for SL, though he was out cheaply that afternoon, he compensated with ball that night claiming 3 important wickets of Tendulkar, manjrekar and jadeja. India was 6 down here with hopeless situation. Score was 115-6. With Mongia and Ashish kapoor also falling cheaply score was 120-8 from 98-1. By this time crowd was already turning violent and lighting papers with fire all over and throwing bottles on to the field. Match was stopped and started twice, but when a bottle was hit to a fielder fielding at deep mid wicket, match had to come to halt and all players went back to pavilion and I was already almost into the tears sitting on the floor in front of the TV set dragging my knees towards my chest with my both the hands witnessing Kumble and Kambli walking out. Seeing Kambli walking out crying looks similar to the sight of a kid crying after getting nicely beaten by teacher in cane for not doing homework. I couldn’t control and had to roll out the tears :(..
I had a serious urge of killing Clive Lloyd, who was the match referee who declared the match was abandoned and declared sri lanka winners.
Could he not have restarted the match from the beginning next day? I kept on wondering and even today I wonder:).
Worst day of Indian cricket as I said, if remembered today makes one feel disheartened.
India has a chance now to take the revenge and hope they would rightly do so :)
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