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Day 1: Indians attack nervous total

By Peter Deeley in Madras

INDIA are in such a dominant position after one day of this historic opening Test against their neighbour, Pakistan, that barring climatic or crowd upheaval the mould of indecision marking past meetings seems certain to be broken.

In the previous decade when these teams last met, 15 of 16 Tests were drawn. International cricket has changed considerably since and batsmen are unable to impose themselves as did their predecessors.

India should bat last on an under-prepared pitch but Pakistan's 238 is at least 60 runs below par and the way the Indian openers crucified the new-ball attack of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis in the final hour suggests the visitors still suffer from morale problems.

Debutant left-hander Sadagopan Ramesh seemed nerveless as he stroked five boundaries and collected 30 runs in 22 balls. He and Venkata Laxman put on 48 without loss in eight overs, Waqar going for 23 in his three and Wasim 21 in four.

Ramesh, 23, was in front of his home crowd and 40,000 rose as one to acclaim the day, not just in celebration of a local boy making good but because they sensed the old enemy were being wounded.

Yet their behaviour was exemplary. Those squatting on the terraces may have had to wait in line for hours to get in - the queues stretched halfway around the ground long before the start - but they were prepared to applaud any individual Pakistan achievement.

These were few in number. Moin Khan and Yousaf Youhana both scored half-centuries and shared in a sixth-wicket stand of 63, however too much damage had been done to the top order to impart any feeling of revival.

Pakistan gambled by sending in the aggressive young Shahid Afridi as Saeed Anwar's opening partner but he did not have the maturity to cope with the moving ball and was soon caught low at first slip.

Tragically, Anwar's long partnership with Aamir Sohail seems over following the latter's recent walk-out. Equally, it was Anwar's misfortune to be given lbw by local umpire V K Ramaswamy when the ball appeared to flick the outside of a pad beyond off stump.

Anil Kumble immediately took a wicket when Inzamam-ul-Haq spooned a full toss back to him and four balls later had Ijaz Ahmed leg before pushing forward.

Youhana, in his eighth Test, showed the application his seniors lacked until Sachin Tendulkar came on to a tumultuous ovation from his fans. Maybe Youhana was unnerved, for he prodded down the wrong line at Tendulkar's third delivery.

Kumble then took the last four wickets, beginning with Moin, whose uppish cut was brilliantly anticipated at slip, and finishing with a veritable gift. Saqlain Mushtaq pushed out a pad, his bat was not within a width of the ball, yet New Zealand umpire Steve Dunne gave him out caught.

For Kumble it was a very special day: ``My 50th Test, my first against Pakistan.'' But he assured us ``relations between the two sides are excellent''.

Day 2: Tireless Saqlain ties down India

THIS is not a Test for the nervous in spirit. After a roller-coaster second day in which first India and then Pakistan nosed ahead, the tension is beginning to show on both sides.

In the packed stands, too. When India's ninth-wicket pair eventually stole into a first-innings lead the cacophony of sound suggested they might have won the game.

The final margin was 16 runs but at the close of a day shortened by bad light Pakistan, at 34 for one, were an overall 18 on. It is likely to remain close since the pitch, which is beginning to misbehave, is the telling factor.

Eight Indian wickets fell to the visiting spinners. Saqlain Mushtaq sent down 34 overs virtually without a break to collect five wickets. Then Shahid Afridi chipped in with the last three.

It was, as so often, a Pakistan side unrecognisable from the previous day. Wasim Akram led with verve and broke the Indian openers with two quick wickets. If Mushtaq Ahmed, unavailable because of back trouble, had been there India might not have got within smelling distance of the visitors' modest first-innings 238.

Until he tired late on Saqlain was sometimes unreadable as he used flight and his wrong 'un to confound the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammad Azharuddin.

Tendulkar lasted three balls, then gave Saqlain the charge and as the batsman was looking towards the mid-wicket boundary, the ball was slicing off his bat to point where Salim Malik took the cosiest of catches.

Azharuddin scratched around and just reached double figures before he was caught via pad and bat. Rahul Dravid, in comparison, showed quality and was always composed, but was eventually leg before to Saqlain, offering no shot, on 53.

Day 3: India on guard as Pakistan cross frontier

THE Indians started to find it funny on Tuesday. Nayan Mongia, their wicketkeeper, popped down to the lobby of their hotel for a haircut and, standing by for the snip, barrels loaded, were a pair of commandos.

They looked on nervously as the barber went at Mongia with the scissors, and accompanied him back upstairs afterwards, their man safe, mission completed. This is now one of the perks of the job in Indian or Pakistani international cricket: wherever you go in the next month, your own commando will go, too.

Everywhere, that is, apart from to the wicket. Only out in the open, in front of 40,000 people, are they alone and this would make a smart statement for the power of sport over politics but for the fact that there are a 3,000-strong security force in the crowd, snipers on the rooftops, and such rigorous checking on the gates that by the time Pakistan were 66 for four in the first session on Thursday, half the crowd were still not inside to watch history being made.

Yet history it is. India have not played Test cricket against Pakistan for nine years, not here in India for 12. There have been attempts but they have failed. There were attempts to stop this series too but, at 10 am on Thursday, Javagal Srinath delivered the first ball of a new era, Saeed Anwar played no stroke, and the minority of spectators who had got inside managed to fill the Chidambaram Stadium with noise.

The 'Pepsi Test Challenge' could not possibly have come about but for considerable activity from Prime Ministers on both sides. Two days before his team flew into New Delhi, the Pakistan Prime Minister decided to appoint a former Foreign Secretary to the position of tour manager.

This is why, on the eve of the Test, the boundary of the cricket field was swarming with international press. ``So this is like nuclear war with bat and ball?'' asked one American reporter, delighted that his first cricket story was shaping up into a metaphor for international relations. ``And can it be true that after five days there still might not be a winner?''

The American was downcast to hear that, when the two sides did last play Test matches, 15 of their previous 16 games had been drawn, but, not to be put off, he was soon in the lobby of the team hotel attempting to discover which were the ``main weapons'' on either side in this war. The weapons themselves all admitted to an unusual tension. ``It is totally different against India,'' said Moin Khan, the Pakistan wicketkeeper. ``The pressure is so much higher.''

But much of it is to do with the history. Twice in the Eighties, these matches induced riots; in a one-day series in 1990, India's captain, Kris Srikkanth, was attacked by a Muslim group and had to be saved by security guards; and when Pakistan last played Test cricket in India, they wore helmets in the outfield for fear of projectiles from the crowd.

It is exactly because the game produces such high emotion that Test rivalry had to be suspended for nine years. To court defeat is to risk personal hate campaigns, as Wasim Akram, the Pakistan captain here, remembers all too well. After Pakistan lost to India in the World Cup quarter-final in 1996, he received threats and his house was stoned. ``Losing is the biggest crime either side can ever commit,'' explained Suresh Saraiya, a famous voice of Indian radio. ``They face the total condemnation of their people. That is why no one wants to play aggressive cricket; fear is always in their minds.''

But the tension here has been cranked up even higher by a man called Bal Thackeray, part self-publicist, part nutter and full-time politician. It was Thackeray's party who dug up the pitch in New Delhi and dumped pigs' heads at the gates of the Chidambaram Stadium in objection to a team of Muslims coming to play on Hindu turf. Thackeray also claimed to have mobilised some 25,000 objectors for the tour and to have a 50-member suicide squad ready to set themselves alight in front of the Prime Minister's house. This succeeded in persuading the Pakistan women's team to cancel a simultaneous tour, but significantly it was once his party had raided the headquarters of the Indian Cricket Board and damaged trophies that he lost all sympathy. Politicians united in opposition, Prime Ministers insisted the game would not be beaten and it was a hugely popular call.

Yet this did not make it easy for the players. ``People were divided as to whether we should go,'' said Shariyar Khan, the Foreign Secretary-turned-tourist.

On Wednesday night, then, Shariyar addressed a team meeting. ``Relations between the two countries get out of hand at the smallest instance,'' he said. ``I talked to them about this, about the high expectations and that they should be mindful of the honour. The rivalry between us is a fact of life, but there is something bigger involved here.''

The Indian authorities appeared to have bought into the same ideal. Early the next morning, huge queues began to grow outside the ground, and when the security checks began, the guards were not just looking for guns, knives and possible projectiles, but any signs of partisanship, too. Indian flags were confiscated and the colour black, a sign of protest, was banned.

They didn't mind, though. It made great entertainment to watch the police wading into the crowd to weed out any offending items that had slipped through the cordon.

For the players, too, this was a huge occasion. Anil Kumble took six wickets on the first day, but preferred afterwards to say that this was his 50th Test match and he had begun to wonder if he would ever get to play against the biggest rival of all. ``This is a special day,'' he said.

Out in the middle, they even seemed to forget that they should be playing to avoid defeat. After 10 Pakistan wickets had tumbled on the first day, young Sadagopan Ramesh opened for India and plundered Wasim and Waqar Younis. Thirty runs off 18 balls - this just wasn't supposed to happen. And somewhere at the back of the stand, the American reporter was heard to say that maybe cricket wasn't such a crazy game after all.

Venkatesh Prasad took five Pakistan wickets in 18 deliveries without conceding a run during the last session on the third day of the first Test yesterday. Prasad finished with six for 33 after Pakistan, 16 behind on the first innings, collapsed from 275 for four to 286 all out.

With India needing 271 to win, Waqar Younis provided the final twist by dismissing Sadagopan Ramesh and Vangipurappu Laxman cheaply. India were 40 for two at the close, wanting 231 more to take the opening match of the two-Test series.

Day 4: Heroic innings is all in vain for Tendulkar

By Peter Deeley in Madras

SACHIN TENDULKAR'S Test century here will go down as one of the glorious failures in sport. Even by his high standards, it was an innings that must rate as the finest of his career.

Yet Pakistan held their nerve at the end to win an epic encounter by 12 runs. Handicapped by a pulled muscle, Tendulkar eventually fell when India still needed 17 runs and Saqlain Mushtaq ran through the unprotected tail to finish with match figures of 10 for 187.

In the morning, India collapsed to 82 for five before Nayan Mongia joined Tendulkar and their partnership stretched deep into the final session, adding 136, by which time Pakistan were looking very dispirited.

In a match of wildly changing fortune, another swing of the pendulum seemed scarcely possible.

Hysteria gripped the crowd and the noise from 50,000 voices, the perpetual drumming and the chanting of ``Gulkar'' for their idol Tendulkar left a dull ache in the ears.

Yet they had watched in near silence up to the tea interval as Saqlain totally dominated the batting, even Tendulkar treating him with the utmost caution as the ball was often lifting and turning - almost spitting.

In the first two sessions, India scored only 107 runs, 90 minutes went by without a boundary, and Saqlain sent down 19 overs for 31 runs.

After tea, Tendulkar decided to attack Saqlain, knowing the second new ball was due. Already 5.5 hours at the crease, in which time every shot had been along the ground, he suddenly lifted Saqlain twice for four, taking 16 off the over - and surviving a stumping when he ventured to attack with his feet.

A surprised Moin Khan failed to gather the ball, Saqlain beat his head on the ground in mortification and Mongia put an arm round Tendulkar to steady his nerves.

Saqlain, who had just been hit for 25 off three overs, was replaced and the new ball taken. Waqar Younis immediately went for 16 runs off two overs, then Saqlain came back to be swept first ball for six by Mongia to take him to 50.

Wasim Akram was now the only ace Pakistan had to play and when Mongia inexplicably went to hit him over the top, the ball flew off the toe of the bat to Waqar at mid-on.

Tendulkar was now in obvious pain every time he hit the ball. As though on automatic, he twice straight drove Wasim for four but then - as if realising he could not carry on much longer - he swung at Saqlain and Wasim this time took the lofted catch at mid-off.

His arch tormentor gone, Saqlain recovered his poise and hardly broke sweat in removing India's final three, Javagal Srinath the last to go when he came down on the ball only for it to spin back on to the stumps.

The scenes then were reminiscent of a cup final. The Pakistan players went down on their knees to kiss this alien turf, they joined together in a song and dance of victory and did a celebratory lap of honour.

The sporting crowd cheered in appreciation - though one man threw a rock - and Wasim went out of his way afterwards to praise the way the Indian people had taken to his team.

He said: ``I have long said that Tendulkar is the best batsman in the world and today we saw one of the best innings I have ever seen played. We never gave up but we knew the key was getting him out.''

Tendulkar, flat on the treatment table, was unable to collect his man-of-the-match award, received for him by India captain Mohammad Azharuddin, who was roundly booed by part of the crowd. Azharuddin said: ``Defeat was deeply disappointing, particularly since we had got back into the game.''