BY their very nature, cricketing encounters between India and Pakistan are always eventful. Talk of the ‘Salim Malik match’ or the magnificent ‘Imran-led victory’, both at the Eden Gardens and the connoisseur will lick his lick his lips in joyful recollection.
Elsewhere in Sydney, in the Aussie autumn of 1992 , there was that comic clash between Miandad and Kiran More which overshadowed the fact that India had won a memorable victory. Then the explosive innings by Ajay Jadeja at Bangalore in the World Cup encounter and the pyrotechnics by Tendulkar versus Shoaib Akhtar in the Centurion Park battle.
Perhaps none are remembered more than the encounters at Sharjah. “Oh! that was the time that Pakistan could not chase 125,” someone will say referring to an earlier match. While another played much later will be remembered as the “one played in darkness”. And what of the 1986 thriller that was annexed in the very last ball by a genius called Miandad? And so on and on, until the true veteran recalls one of the earliest confrontations between the two neighbours at Sahiwal in the autumn of 1978 when Sarfaraz bowled short to Vishwanath, Bedi protested to umpire Shakoor Rana and Mushtaq Mohammed asked the Indian captain to send in “someone taller” who could tackle those bouncers. In the event, the Indians walked out in a huff and there it lay.
Pakistani cricketers had a score to settle after the defeats at home earlier this year. And what better way to do it than to clinch victory on the hallowed turf of Eden? To many of the aficionados present on this hazy, windless evening, this will go down in cricketing history as Inzi’s match.
What cool self-assurance, what incredible pacing of an innings! It was not going to be won by fours and sixes or by collaring the bowling. It was going to be done with surgical precision, over by over, even ball by ball. Those of us who sat in wonderment under the foggy night sky in the wash of those floodlights, could almost read Inzi’s thoughts. Ganguly still has to bowl those two overs from the fifth bowler. And Pakistan in true professional fashion, made a meal out of the fifth bowler and that is where the match was won and lost. A new hero was added alongside the pantheon comprising Salim Malik, Javed Miandad and Imran Khan in the annals of matches won virtually singlehanded. Yes, there was this gallant young man called Salman Butt who anchored it all, but then the purist can be cruel when remembering a match! We felt a bit peeved that the otherwise knowledgeable crowd did not applaud the strokeplay and the finer moments of Pakistan batting, fours and sixes were greeted in ominous silence. But look at it another way — this is no ordinary match, it is a clash between Achilles and Hector, the twilight of the gods, where the winner takes all, almost a classic opera of cricket. As a famous writer once put it, there are no second prizes in One-Day cricket. Give me this rivalry any day, especially if it leads to better camaraderie off the field!
The 13/11 match had been built up over two months in Calcutta until it had reached a crescendo of public interest. The authorities left nothing to chance and seats had to be reduced for security reasons. If the official capacity was 90,000 plus it was down on that magic evening to around 80,000. Let us not quibble about the fact that this would still take in National Stadium and Lord’s put together and still have plenty left over to accommodate the whole of the new stadium at Paarl!
While there might not have been an explosion in the stands each time Inzi or Butt struck the ball, there was plenty of appreciation in muted whispers, especially much later on. The media, even in spite of the preoccupation with the suspension of Ganguly, had plenty of lung power leftover to call this victory “a milestone one” and the performances “gutsy and memorable”.
Returning ever so briefly to the fifth bowler, the Pakistanis always looked as if they had a plan to play the spinners on merit, come to terms with the three medium pacers and terrorize the fifth bowler/bowlers. And how well the plan worked! When Harbhajan failed to grip the ball, the batting went in pursuit of the off-spinner as well. This was the only way to tackle a score of 292.
In the Muslim areas of the city, biryani evenings had been put together to welcome ‘our guests’. In Park Circus, in Kidderpore and Metiaburuz there was a great amount of anticipation for the match and it is fitting perhaps, a sort of expiation of what happened some four years ago, that everything happened in the right sporting spirit.
“Is it because you support the Pakistanis that you are putting on this kebab and biryani feast?” I asked the owner of Shiraz, one of the leading restaurant’s on Syed Amir Ali Avenue. “I don’t care who wins and who loses; in fact I don’t even follow cricket; I am just so thrilled that the players of the two countries are getting together; we are going to be happy again.”
BY their very nature, cricketing encounters between India and Pakistan are always eventful. Talk of the ‘Salim Malik match’ or the magnificent ‘Imran-led victory’, both at the Eden Gardens and the connoisseur will lick his lick his lips in joyful recollection.
