Chennai 1999 – a retrospective

It’s 20 years since India and Pakistan played out a terrific Test in Chennai. The 18-year-old me watched this game on television – in between trying to study for my 12th standard board exams. I am pretty sure I only caught bits and pieces of days one, two and three – and once Afridi got a rambunctious hundred and gave Pakistan a handy lead, I assumed the game was up. Venkatesh Prasad picked up a bagful of wickets to bowl Pakistan out in the second innings – including a surreal spell of five wickets for no run – but, still, a 270-run lead was formidable. Especially given that Pakistan could call upon bowlers of the calibre of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mushtaq.

India went into lunch on day four at 86 for 5…

… and then came a most extraordinary denouement. Passages of play that burnt itself into my head and continue to haunt me at random moments. I remember waiting for a bus on a freezing Chicago winter day in 2008, replaying some of the shots that Tendulkar and Mongia played in that superb partnership, then replaying the way each was dismissed and feeling so bad how the tail had crumbled without scoring 17 runs. Nearly ten years after the match, I was close to tears in a bus stop in a land so far away, surrounded by men and women who had very little idea about cricket – let alone the match that I was feeling so pathetic about.

I have seen several matches of cricket in my life but somehow it was this one that came  back to me most often, uplifting me, depressing me and putting me in a sombre mood. It was also perhaps the match most responsible for my cricket obsession. For up until then, I was in love with cricket – played it, watched it, talked about it – but it was only after January 1999 that cricket began to occupy my every waking hour. There was something so glorious about that Tendulkar innings… yet something so incomplete in there. There was something so gut-wrenching about the end of that Test… yet something so moving in the way the crowd gave Pakistan a standing ovation. Everything was mesmerizing… until nothing mattered anymore. Everything was lost… until so much more was regained.

This was the Test that took so much away. Yet this was a Test that gave so much back.

Something had to be done to understand why I felt so strongly about this game.

So I decided to speak to fans, players and journalists who were at the ground on January 31, 1999. If I – who had watched the game from so far away – felt so passionately about what had happened, what of those who were at the ground? Surely they had suffered deeper scars?

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

The college students in the Indian Oil Stand were high-fiving so hard their palms hurt. Their throats were sore. “The atmosphere in the stadium: oh man,” remembers Venkitasubban. “Whenever the ball went up in the air, whenever Sachin came down the track, whenever they took a risky single, my heart would stop. You want him to score but you don’t want him to get out. Every ball: like a rollercoaster ride. We kept screaming instructions to Mongia. ‘Just calm down.’ ‘Relax.’ ‘Take it easy.’ If there was a risky single, we would go, ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t.’ We were worried Mongia will get Sachin run-out. Or do something very silly. We kept shouting: ‘Sodappadhe!‘ [Don’t mess it up].”

You can read the whole piece, published in The Cricket Monthly, here.

You can also read another piece I wrote on this very Test back in 2011.

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The reactions to the piece have only confirmed what I have suspected: that this game has left a mark on so many people across India and Pakistan. I have been overwhelmed by the stories that readers have shared and the sharp memories that they retain.

Here’s @eigzackly on Twitter:

Remember being on a Mumbai suburb street as the electricity went off at home between lunch and tea cobbled around a Radio on a chappalwala’s stall hooked to the ball by ball commentary with every other passing auto rickshaw slowing down near us and asking Sachin aahe na?

And here’s a set of tweets from @MirSuhailssm recalling his memories of that day.

Here’s a poignant memory from @theprobabilist:

This was one of my most distinct childhood cricketing memories. I was 15, “far away” from Chennai, in a rain-soaked Trivandrum, competing in a tennis tournament, huddled around a 14″ television with about 50 others in a tiny room

And another from @KK_Ilkal

I was 11 at the time. No ESPN. Udaya News at 1 pm – India 87/5. After that, every 30-40 min I would check the score with ITI students who were staying near my house (in Ilkal), listening to radio. Tendulkar out, still thought India would win easily. Next time I asked them the score, they said India lost by 12. That was the last time I saw those ITI students, still remember their names and faces. Hoping one day I would connect with them again and relive that day.

And these are just a sampling. My timeline is awash with memory after memory, each bringing forth what that match meant for so many people across two countries.

I am sure I will think of of this match again. But I will do so with a sense of solidarity. There are so many, many others on whom this classic Test has left a mark. At least now, I have this piece and all these accompanying memories. At least now I am not alone.