India v Pakistan 1st Test

The first series in years

Pakistan had not toured India for almost twelve years when Wasim Akram's side arrived in January 1999, and the first Test at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai carried a weight that went beyond the cricket. Security concerns and political tension around the tour had put the whole series in doubt in the weeks before it began, and the Chennai crowd that filled the ground for the first Test was watching the two neighbours play a Test match on Indian soil for the first time in over a decade. Wasim won the toss and chose to bat first, but the innings never quite settled: Shahid Afridi and Saeed Anwar were both gone by 41, and Inzamam-ul-Haq and Ijaz Ahmed followed soon after to leave Pakistan 66 for 4. Mohammad Yousuf made 53 and the wicketkeeper Moin Khan 60, and Pakistan were bowled out for 238, with Anil Kumble taking 6 for 70 and Javagal Srinath 3 for 63 for India.

India's reply was unsteady. Sadagoppan Ramesh, on debut, made 43 and Rahul Dravid 53, and Sourav Ganguly added 54, but Sachin Tendulkar was out for a duck, caught off Wasim Akram for just 3 balls faced, and India were bowled out for 254, a lead of only 16. Saqlain Mushtaq's off spin, mixed with his doosra, a delivery Indian batters had barely seen before that series, took 5 for 94.

Afridi's 141 sets up a target

Pakistan's second innings belonged to Shahid Afridi, still only 18 and playing the kind of attacking innings that had already made him famous in one-day cricket after his fastest ever hundred against Sri Lanka a few years earlier. He made 141 from 191 balls, a much more patient effort than his reputation suggested, adding 97 for the third wicket with Inzamam-ul-Haq, who made 51, and 106 for the fifth with Saleem Malik, who made 32. Venkatesh Prasad ran through the tail with 6 for 33, but Pakistan had already done enough, and were bowled out for 286.

The target for India was 271 to win. Pakistan, needing ten wickets on a wearing pitch with two days to bowl at them, had the better of the arithmetic, and their attack, built around the pace of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and the spin of Saqlain Mushtaq, was as strong as any India would face that decade.

India slip early

The chase started badly. Sadagoppan Ramesh was caught for 5 and VVS Laxman lbw for a duck, and India were 6 for 2 inside six overs. Rahul Dravid made only 10 before he was bowled, and at 50 for 3 the match, and effectively the series, was balanced on what India's middle order could do against Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mushtaq. The crowd that had cheered every Indian boundary two days earlier fell largely silent, and the pressure on the players chasing 271 on a pitch offering turn and uneven bounce was evident in how carefully each new batter had to play themselves in.

Tendulkar alone

Sachin Tendulkar came in at number four and stayed until nearly the end. He put on 44 with Dravid, then 23 with Mohammad Azharuddin, who made 7, then 9 with Ganguly, who made only 2, and India kept losing partners at the other end while Tendulkar accumulated his innings steadily against Pakistan's three front-line bowlers. His most substantial stand was 136 with the wicketkeeper Nayan Mongia for the sixth wicket, added from 266 balls, and it took India from 82 for 5 to 218.

Mongia made a battling 52 before he was out, and Tendulkar carried on, adding 36 more with Sunil Joshi for the seventh wicket. He was finally caught off Saqlain Mushtaq for 136, made from 273 balls, with the total on 254 and India needing 17 more runs to win with three wickets in hand. It was the shot that ended the innings, rather than the bowling that preceded it, that people remembered: after batting with total control for the better part of a day, Tendulkar departed trying to accelerate the chase to its close, only for the ball to find a fielder.

Twelve runs

It did not happen. Anil Kumble was lbw for 1, Sunil Joshi followed at the same score, and Javagal Srinath was bowled for 1, and India were all out for 258. Pakistan won by 12 runs. Saqlain Mushtaq finished with 5 for 93 in the innings and 10 wickets in the match, and Wasim Akram took 3 for 80. Sachin Tendulkar was named Man of the Match, a rare honour for a player on the losing side, in recognition of an innings that had very nearly won the match alone.

The margin was one of the tightest in the long history of India-Pakistan Tests, and it left a lasting impression on everyone who played in it. Tendulkar himself later described the loss as among the most painful of his career, precisely because his own innings had carried India so close before the tail could not get the last handful of runs. Three wickets fell for four runs in the space of a few overs, turning what had looked a likely Indian win into a Pakistan victory inside a single session.

A series that turned on this Test

India levelled the two-match series in the second Test in Delhi, where Anil Kumble took all ten wickets in an innings, at the time only the second bowler in Test history to do so (a third came in 2021, when New Zealand's Ajaz Patel did it against India), and the series finished drawn 1-1. Even so, the Chennai crowd, despite the home defeat, gave the Pakistan team a standing ovation as they left the field, a moment remembered as one of the warmer notes in a rivalry that has rarely produced many. The full scorecard from Chennai, with every partnership and fall of wicket, is on this page. See how the two sides were built on the Pakistan and India team pages, and in The Follow-On you can take India in to bat and try to finish the chase Tendulkar could not.

Sources

• CricArcade Test archive: the full scorecard, fall of wickets and partnerships on this page
• ESPNcricinfo: Pakistan v India, 1st Test, Chennai, 1999, scorecard and report
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2000: Pakistan in India