1999 India vs Pakistan | Historic 1st Test @Chennai | Thriller | 🇵🇰 Most Famous Win | Sachin 136.

Pakistan 238 & 286
India (T:271) 254 & 258

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India vs Pakistan, 1st Test at Chennai, Jan 28 1999, Pakistan tour of India

On the morning of January 31, 1999, about half an hour before the fourth day's play at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, in the first Test between India and Pakistan in nine years, with a police cordon surrounding the pitch and another set of cops shushing a group that chanted "harega bhai harega, Pakistan harega" (Will lose, will lose, Pakistan will lose) - their use of Hindi in Tamil Nadu perhaps as provocative as the jeering itself - AC Vijay and Sooria J took in the scenes from a concrete stand square of the wicket.It was a warm Sunday morning, as Vijay remembers it. A soothing breeze may have sneaked into the ground, he says, likely carrying the distinctive "perfume" from the adjoining Buckingham Canal. Their group of four - "or maybe five" - waved scarf-sized India flags. Vijay, 23, had recently moved from Madurai to Chennai. He had just landed his first job and was now watching his first international cricket match in a stadium. Three years earlier, Vijay had told his friends of his decision to name his son Sachin - an event still 13 years into the future. On television he had seen how the crowd in Mumbai throbbed with pride when they chorused "Saa-chiiin Sa-chin" during the World Cup game against Australia in 1996. "Ian Chappell had described the chant on air." Now he and his friends tried to set off the same reverb in Chennai. This, after all, was the ground where Tendulkar's three Tests had brought 376 runs. He had dismantled England in 1993, when the city was Madras. He had dismantled Australia in 1998 - notably slog-sweeping Shane Warne, bowling around the stumps, into the crowd at midwicket. Chappell was on air again. He would later say the shot turned the series.Tendulkar was now playing his fifth Test against Pakistan, and his first as an adult. On day two he shimmied down the ground and sliced a doosra from Saqlain Mushtaq, the progenitor of the delivery, in an attempt to clear the long-on boundary. The ball ballooned to backward point. Out for a third-ball duck. Vijay missed the shot but saw the catch. "There was no giant screen then. If you missed it, you missed it."G Krishnan, a bank employee, had faked illness to be at the game. "How can a batsman of the stature of Tendulkar play a stupid shot like that so early?" he asked the Mid-Day correspondent, Clayton Murzello. In the stands, a man behind a snack stall declared: "Tendulkar had no business to play such a shot."Late on the third evening, with India 6 for 2 and needing 265 more, a helmeted Tendulkar walked to the middle once more. VVS Laxman was barely ten paces into his walk back, his mind perhaps replaying the Waqar Younis in-ducker that trapped him lbw, when the crowd stood as one to usher in the No. 4. In that delirium some spectators sensed both adoration and dread. An outpouring of hope but also a wail of desperation. Score if you can, the crowd seemed to be saying, but please, for heaven's sake, don't get out.

A surge of electricity greeted Tendulkar's first scoring shot, for two. Four dot balls steadied the breaths… until out came a cover drive off Waqar: the right leg back and across… the left leg just off the ground… a crisp crack of bat on ball… the red blur singeing the grass… the left leg back on the turf … soon to be propelled, along with his other foot, into a dainty sideways hop. A knight prancing across the diagonal. Ball nazar aayi?"What a shot," said Harsha Bhogle on air, the awe in his voice filling a million living rooms.

Saqlain was at the peak of his powers. His first three Test wickets in India: Tendulkar (doosra), Azharuddin (offbreak, caught bat-pad) and Dravid (playing for the turn, missing a doosra) - as accomplished a trio against spin as any.At the end of day two, having picked five wickets to even up the game, Saqlain lent some perspective to this personal triumph. He was yet
to move on from his father's death. Facing them, Tendulkar and Mongia. The next ball, Tendulkar charged. He wasn't to the pitch but he tried to launch the ball over long-on anyway. The bottom edge ricocheted to the wicketkeeper. Moin Khan could have caught him, stumped him and sung him a lullaby. Saqlain was set to celebrate, raising his hands - when he saw that Moin had dropped the ball. Saqlain collapsed, squatting on the turf, and turned to Akram in disbelief. Moin, the vice-captain, hands on his hips, was lost for words. The drifty doosra that outdid Tendulkar called for a hearty "Shabash Saqi" but even a cricketer as intrepid as Moin didn't dare.

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