When the Pakistani innings began, a hush fell on the stadium—that’s the way Aamir Sohail and Saeed Anwar responded to the challenge. They were scoring at over eight runs an over when Anwar fell. Then came what some call the turning point of the match. Sohail was plundering the Indian bowlers then. After another boundary, he looked at Venkatesh Prasad and seemed to make fun of him. Prasad came back and bowled him. Eyes blazing and his mouth frozen wide open in a sustained war cry, he asked the Pakistan captain to "get out". From then, the momentum of Pakistan’s innings slowed down dramatically. After two more wickets, on the dirt-track now were two men whom India feared most. Salim Malik and Javed Miandad ambled along as though they had some devious plan in their minds. But as it transpired, the two old men didn’t have a plan. Just a past.
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Salim Malik was trapped leg-before by Bangalore’s own Kumble. Suddenly, it all looked possible, if not real. India was in sight of victory. Miandad, who made many Indians weep when he hit Chetan Sharma for that infamous last-ball six in Sharjah, was still lurking. But he was just a ghost of his own reputation that day. It seemed that he just could not raise the game. When the score was 239, he was run out. As he walked back to the dressing room, wounded, defeated, he looked like a soldier who only did his duty in Sharjah but was being hung today by India. And that man who fell in Chinnaswamy stadium will rise never more.
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This That
- It was Javed Miandad’s final one-day It was the first match to be played under floodlights at the Chinnaswamy stadium
- Waqar reached the elite 200 club after this match
