This day, that year: Anil Kumble’s perfect 10 against Pakistan that buried the Chennai ghosts
Ever since England’s Alfred Shaw bowled the first delivery in Test cricket in March 1877, only two bowlers in international cricket’s history have claimed all ten wickets in an innings.
English spinner Jim Laker brought up the feat against arch-rivals Australia at Old Trafford in the 1956 Ashes.
Almost 43 years later, on a chilly morning in Delhi on February 7, 1999, Anil Kumble would get the perfect ten against India’s arch-nemesis Pakistan.
The last time India and Pakistan had played a Test series was when Sachin Tendulkar debuted as a teenager, in 1989.
10 years later, he was the best batsman in the world.
Tendulkar conquered the top-class Pakistan bowling attack in Chennai but couldn’t prevent the heartbreak.
Battling a back injury, Tendulkar sculpted a masterpiece before falling 17 runs short of the target. India lost their next four wickets for four runs to hand Pakistan a 1-0 lead.
A win in Delhi would have helped India draw the series.
Javagal Srinath, the last batsman to fall in Chennai, had held himself responsible for the 12-run heartbreak.
Keen to make amends, Srinath played the most important innings of his career and shared a 100-run eighth-wicket stand with Sourav Ganguly to help India set Pakistan a target of 420 runs in Delhi.
Pakistan were well-poised for a record chase
On a hastily re-laid substandard dusty surface due to fundamentalists’ vandalism a month earlier, India had done well to set a platform for win.
As a batsman, only Sadagoppan Ramesh had championed the conditions. Pakistan openers were about to change the trend.
Chasing a world record target to win, Pakistan openers Saeed Anwar and Shahid Afridi exhibited such flamboyance that it seemed the demons on the surface had died.
Pakistan had raced to 101 for no loss, scoring at over four an over, and were going for the win.
Anil Kumble, who had picked four wickets in the first innings, found no purchase from the surface from the Football Stand End, bowling six overs for 27 runs.
Another defeat would have had serious repercussions. India-Pakistan encounters on a cricket field mean more than just cricket.
“Hope you are winning to win tomorrow?” The then Indian Prime Minister AB Vajpayee had asked the Indian coach Anshuman Gaekwad on the eve of Day Four.
During the lunch break, Gaekwad gave a pep talk to the side and asked the Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin to rely more on Kumble in the following session.
Anil Kumble creates history
Azhar switched Kumble to the pavilion end. Into the third over of the new spell, the leg-spinner found Afridi’s edge to Nayan Mongia’s gloves.
Umpire AV Jayaprakash ruled it out much to the batsman’s disgust.
“Who walks? Nobody walks. It was a big nick. That wicket started everything and I knew it wouldn’t be easy for the rest of the batsmen,” Anil Kumble would later recall in a conversation with ESPNCricinfo.
Ijaz Ahmed fell leg before the next ball. Inzamam-ul-Haq survived the hat-trick ball but his stay lasted just 14 balls before he dragged one on to the stumps.
Mohammad Yousuf (then Yousuf Youhanna) could manage only a second-ball duck.
In a matter of four-and-half overs, Pakistan slid from 101 for no loss to 115 for four.
Wicketkeeper Moin Khan was promoted due to Saleem Malik’s injury. Kumble would draw him forward and get the ball to climb. The edge lobbed to Ganguly at slip, who completed a good low catch. Kumble had completed his five-for.
But Saeed Anwar was still there, making his good form count. Kumble tried hitting the footmarks from round the wicket, but nothing seemed to deter Anwar’s concentration.
So he switched over the wicket, bowled a slow leg-break to force a bat-pad and end his vigil. That was the moment when Kumble thought that he could grab all ten.
But Pakistan would ensure that his wait goes on for much longer.
Saleem Malik braved an injury and supported captain Wasim Akram at the crease.
Kumble, who had bowled non-stop since lunch, was tiring. The tea break allowed him to refresh and rethink.
“I knew Malik was injured, so I tried to hamper his movement. Since he was slightly slow in his foot movement, I pitched a quicker delivery. He went for the pull, and the bounce deceived him,” Kumble would later recall in the same interaction.
It was a clay surface, and the ball zipped in quick, beating Malik with the low bounce. Kumble now had seven in his kitty.
The spin duo of Mushtaq Ahmed and Saqlain Mushtaq fell on consecutive deliveries. Those deliveries would have felled even the best of batters, and these were men with limited batting abilities.
History was only a wicket away.
Half a decade earlier, when Kapil Dev was on the brink of surpassing Richard Hadlee’s world record, Anil Kumble was asked by Azhar to bowl wide.
This time, the Indian captain would instruct the same to Javagal Srinath, who would have anyway bowled wide for his Karnataka teammate.
“Nobody had to come and tell me to not take that remaining wicket. Anil had been bowling well, and he was on the verge of a record, and it was just a unanimous decision,” Srinath would later reveal.
There’s another disputed version from Wasim Akram where he claimed that Waqar Younis wanted to get run out to prevent Kumble from reaching the record.
Wasim Akram would reply, “You can’t deny him the feat if he is destined for it. But I can assure you that I’m not going to give my wicket to Kumble."
Waqar went on to deny Akram's version though.
Srinath continued bowling them wide. So wide that even in Test cricket, umpire Steve Bucknor had to stretch his arms.
Then Srinath dug it short to Waqar Younis, who top-edged a pull and Ramesh, at square-leg, sprinted to attempt the catch.
Ramesh would later rightly claim that he was the Buzz Aldrin to Anil Kumble’s Neil Armstrong-feat from that Test.
On a challenging track at Feroz Shah Kotla, Ramesh, playing his second Test, had set up the Indian win with strokeful knocks of 60 and 96.
But when that ball went aerial, the rest of the Indian team and another billion-odd in unison hoped Ramesh would spill it.
A catch could make him a villain despite all the heroics.
Emotions ran high. Some may have screamed at him to ‘drop it’ as a spectator, some from the playing arena and many at their television sets.
“He was supposed to drop the catch, that was the plan,” Anil Kumble recently recalled.
Thankfully, the ball landed in a no-man zone.
Anil Kumble was on a hat-trick in the following over. No other Indian bowler till then had a Test hat-trick to his name.
A perfect ten with a hat-trick? Wasim would foil the plan.
But two balls later, it came. Wasim would top-edge to VVS Laxman at short-leg to bring up the magic moment.
Kumble became the second cricketer to claim all ten wickets in an innings. India levelled the series to bury the ghosts of Chennai.
“My first reaction is that we have won. No one dreams of taking ten wickets in an innings, because you can’t. The pitch was of variable bounce, and cutting and pulling was not easy. All I had to do was pitch in the right area, mix up my pace and spin, and trap the batsmen. The first wicket was the hardest to get - the openers were cruising,” Anil Kumble would later say.
Not surprisingly, Kumble was awarded the Player of the Match for his 14 wickets in the Test, including the perfect ten.
He was humble enough to admit that the award could have gone to a batsman on this trying surface.
In a parallel universe, it could have been Sadagoppan Ramesh.
Trivia
#1 – In the over Kumble picked Afridi and Ijaz, it was Tendulkar who had handed the bowler’s cap and sweater to the umpire. As a part of superstition, the practice continued till Pakistan were bowled out.
#2 – Richard Stokes, then 53, was in Delhi. It was his birthday. A cricket fan, he had arrived at Kotla and went on to witness Anil Kumble’s perfect ten. As a schoolkid, in 1956, he had seen Jim Laker reach the feat.
#3 – On two occasions in the match, Anil Kumble was on a hat-trick. He would end his career as India’s most successful bowler but with no hat-tricks.
His spin bowling partner in this Delhi Test was a teenaged off-spinner Harbhajan Singh.
Two years later, coming in as Kumble’s replacement against Australia, Harbhajan would become the first Indian to a Test hat-trick.
Brief scores
India 252 (Sadagoppan Ramesh 60, VVS Laxman 35, Rahul Dravid 33, Mohammad Azharuddin 67; Saqlain Mushtaq 5 for 94) & 339 (Sadagoppan Ramesh 96, Sourav Ganguly 62*, Javagal Srinath 49; Saqlain Mushtaq 5-122) beat Pakistan 172 (Shahid Afridi 32, Saleem Malik 31; Harbhajan Singh 3-30, Anil Kumble 4-75) & 207 (Saeed Anwar 69, Shahid Afridi 41, Wasim Akram 37; Anil Kumble 10-74) by 212 runs.