India 276 (SR Tendulkar 73, M Prabhakar 62; CR Matthews 3–32) and 29–1
Match drawn
South Africa won the series 1–0
England in India 1993
1st Test. Kolkata. 29 January–2 February 1993
India 371 (M Azharuddin 182, SR Tendulkar 50; GA Hick 3–19, DE Malcolm 3–67) and 82–2 (NS Sidhu 37, SR Tendulkar 9*; GA Hick 2–9)
England 163 (MW Gatting 33; RK Chauhan 3–30, SLV Raju 3–39, A Kumble 3–50) and 286 (f/o) (MW Gatting 81, AJ Stewart 49; A Kumble 3–76, SLV Raju 3–80)
India won by 8 wickets
2nd Test. Chennai. 11–15 February 1993
India 560–6 dec (SR Tendulkar 165, NS Sidhu 106, PK Amre 78, Kapil Dev 66, VG Kambli 59)
England 286 (NH Fairbrother 83, AJ Stewart 74, GA Hick 64; SLV Raju 4–103) and 252 (f/o) (CC Lewis 117, RA Smith 56; A Kumble 6–64)
India won by an innings and 22 runs
3rd Test. Mumbai. 19–23 February 1993
England 347 (GA Hick 178, CC Lewis 49; Kapil Dev 3–35, A Kumble 3–95) and 229 (RA Smith 62, MW Gatting 61, GA Hick 47; A Kumble 4–70)
India 591 (VG Kambli 224, NS Sidhu 79, SR Tendulkar 78, PK Amre 57; PCR Tufnell 4–142
India won by an innings and 15 runs
India won the series 3–0
West Indies in India 1994
1st Test. Mumbai. 18–22 November 1994
India 272 (NR Mongia 80, SV Manjrekar 51, SR Tendulkar 34; CA Walsh 6–79) and 333 (SR Tendulkar 85, SV Manjrekar 66, J Srinath 60; KCG Benjamin 4–82)
West Indies 243 (SC Williams 49; SLV Raju 5–60) and 266 (JR Murray 85, JC Adams 81; J Srinath 4–48, SLV Raju 3–85)
India won by 96 runs
2nd Test. Nagpur. 1–5 December 1994
India 546–9 dec (SR Tendulkar 179, NS Sidhu 107, M Azharuddin 97, A Kumble 52*) and 208–7 dec (NS Sidhu 76, SR Tendulkar 54)
West Indies 428 (JC Adams 125*, CL Hooper 81, JR Murray 54, BC Lara 50, PV Simmons 50; SLV Raju 5–127) and 132–5 (CL Hooper 67; A Kumble 3–45)
Match drawn
3rd Test. Mohali. 10–14 December 1994
West Indies 443 (JC Adams 174, AC Cummins 50; A Kumble 4–90, SLV Raju 3–73) and 301–3 dec (BC Lara 91, JC Adams 78*, KLT Arthurton 70*)
India 387 (M Prabhakar 120, J Srinath 52*, SR Tendulkar 40) and 114 (J Srinath 17*, S Manjrekar 17, SR Tendulkar 10; KCG Benjamin 5–65, CA Walsh 3–34)
West Indies won by 243 runs
Series drawn 1–1
7
WORLD CUP 1996
Our preparations for the World Cup began with a training camp in Bangalore in January 1996. For some reason, it had been decided by the management that it would be a good idea for the team to run from the hotel to the Chinnaswamy Stadium every morning, with the team bus and security cars trailing behind. I still don’t understand the logic behind this bright idea or why somebody came up with it in the first place. None of us were used to road running and injuries were bound to happen. I ended up with a sore shin on the very first day, while a number of other guys had problems with their backs and hamstrings.
A joke started doing the rounds in the dressing room about whether we would be fielding on the road or on the cricket field. We were all prepared to run as much as they liked on grass, but there was no point risking injuries by running on hard roads just weeks before the World Cup. A few players suggested calculating the distance between the hotel and the ground and running the same distance inside the stadium instead. The management listened to what we had to say and road running was quickly abandoned. Our World Cup preparations started in earnest the following morning.
During the camp we would get to the ground by 7 a.m. and stay there till 2 p.m. The sessions were long and draining and I made sure to have a big breakfast to keep up my energy levels. I was only twenty-three in 1996 and could digest everything I ate. Every morning I would have four fried eggs sunny side up, with ketchup and tabasco sauce, making two sandwiches of the four eggs, which I just loved. The breakfast would keep me going for hours and I thoroughly enjoyed the long training sessions. In the evenings we spent time in the pool or in the gym and soon all the players were looking forward to the tournament. No team had won the cup on home soil and it was our chance to make history.
Group stages, February–March 1996
Our first match was against Kenya at Cuttack in Odisha in Eastern India on 18 February and we won the match comfortably. I scored a hundred and was Man of the Match. We then moved on to Gwalior in the west of the country to play the West Indies three days later, confident of sustaining the momentum. While February in the east of India can be nippy, in the west the temperatures can touch 30 degrees during the day. I had a fever the night before the West Indies game but still played and contributed 70 to our victory, which was set up by some fine bowling by Prabhakar and Kumble once again. Early on in my innings Courtney Browne, the West Indies wicketkeeper, dropped a skier at short square leg and I was able to make the most of my reprieve.
Having won our first two games, we played Australia in Mumbai on 27 February, determined to upstage the tournament favourites. Australia batted well and put up a competitive 258, riding on a brilliant innings from Mark Waugh, the younger of the Waugh twins, who scored 126. We did not begin the chase well and lost two early wickets to Damien Fleming, who bowled well throughout the tournament. That’s when I tried to counter-attack, to get on top of Glenn McGrath and Fleming.
I managed to establish control and was going really well until the Australians gave the ball to Mark Waugh to have a go with his off-spin. I immediately picked up a couple of runs to square leg, followed by a sweep for four. As I’d hoped, the deep midwicket fielder was moved slightly towards square leg. Space at midwicket meant I could now go over the top for a boundary. Seeing me jump out, Mark Waugh bowled a wide ball. I couldn’t reach it and was out stumped for 90. I have to admit I had been out-thought. It was a key moment in the game and we soon lost control amid a flurry of wickets. It was dispiriting to lose the match from a winning position.
Looking after my interests
An odd thing happened during the break between innings in that Australia game. At the time, I was perhaps the only Indian player who was playing without a bat sponsor. Most players had ‘Four Square’ or ‘Wills’ on their bats, but my determination not to endorse a tobacco brand meant I was playing without a bat sticker. A few months before the tournament started, a leading multinational, which had just entered India, had approached me but talks had not progressed much. I had quoted an amount to them to which they did not agree. I was therefore surprised when, in the middle of the game, the managing director of this company came over to meet me and suggested that if I put his company’s sticker on my bat there and then, they would pay me any amount I wanted.
I turned down the offer. I was clear I wanted no distractions in the middle of a tournament. I did not want an alien element on my bat, something I had not come to terms with, to catch my eye while I was batting. It might have affected my rhythm. I said I would put a sticker on my bat when I wanted to and not when I was asked to do so. I had done well without a bat sticker up till then and, like most sportsmen (though not all care to acknowledge it), I was superstitious about such things. I did not want to risk making changes when I was batting well. The bat sticker could wait.
Towards the closing stages of the tournament, my friend and manager Mark Mascarenhas, head of the sports management company WorldTel, mentioned to me that he had lined up MRF, the well-known Indian car tyre brand, as a bat sponsor but the deal would only come into effect after the tournament. Mark, who was based in Connecticut and had made a name for himself by winning the television rights of the 1996 World Cup, knew my concerns well and never pushed me into doing anything against my wishes. His ability to understand and appreciate my issues made him a really special person. Mark was more a friend
than a manager and I was able to trust him fully with all my needs. While he changed the nature of player endorsements in cricket by bringing a string of major corporates to the table, he did so without ever forcing a particular endorsement on me.
I first met Mark in Sri Lanka in 1995 and it was Ravi Shastri who introduced us. Ravi said to me that here was a man who could shake things up and had a very interesting proposition for me. As soon as I met him I was impressed by his professionalism and attention to detail. Mark never left anything to chance. We were really close and even went on a couple of family holidays together. On one of these holidays, to Coonoor in South India, we had a fantastic time eating all the local delicacies and playing golf. Mark was another foodie and I have fond memories of the many fantastic meals we had together in his house in Connecticut in 1998 when I spent a week there. I was totally shocked when I first heard about his fatal car accident at Kharbi, not far from Nagpur in central India in 2002, and must say I lost a very close friend and confidant. We worked wonderfully well together and it is impossible to fill the void created by his untimely death.
After Mark was gone a number of agents approached me and expressed an interest in managing my affairs. However, my relationship with Mark was such that it never occurred to me to leave WorldTel. And I am happy to say I have been proved right, with Vinod Naidu, my current manager and friend, taking care of my affairs for a decade and more, first on behalf of WorldTel and then on behalf of WSG (World Sport Group). I first met Vinod in Sharjah in 1998 and then in London over a delicious lunch at my favourite Thai restaurant, Patara, when Mark introduced the two of us. It was after Mark’s untimely demise that Vinod and I started working closely together. We spoke to each other regularly and, like Mark, Vinod soon came to understand and respect my concerns. It was always clear to him that my cricket was my top priority. Between Mark and Vinod, I have been lucky to have two great people to work with. In fact, it would perhaps not be wrong to say that I have spent more days with Vinod than anyone else in the professional realm over the last decade and I have enjoyed every bit of it. Vinod knows me inside out and has been a constant presence whenever I needed him. To spend so much time away from his family in order to manage my interests is evidence of his commitment to his profession, and his is another friendship I deeply cherish.
Pakistan again
The quarter-final against Pakistan on 9 March 1996 was by far the biggest match of the World Cup. There was tremendous security around the team hotel and we knew that the nation would be watching. That was not so unusual for an India–Pakistan match, but the World Cup had added a further dimension to this particular knock-out encounter. On the day of the match we reached the ground early and found the atmosphere at the Chinnaswamy Stadium to be truly unbelievable. The stadium was packed hours before the game and the crowd was loud and boisterous.
We batted first and I was the first to get out for 31 to Ata-ur-Rehman, the Pakistan fast bowler, trying to steer the ball to third man. Navjot Sidhu, who opened the batting with me, batted well for his 93 and Ajay Jadeja played a fantastic cameo towards the end, scoring 45 off twenty-five balls to get us to a very respectable 287 in our fifty overs.
Pakistan started brightly in response and raced to 80 in their first ten overs. We badly needed a wicket to keep the scoring in check and that’s when a famous incident took place involving Aamer Sohail, the Pakistan opener, and Venkatesh Prasad, our fast-medium bowler. Sohail had hit Venky for a boundary towards point and suggested rather aggressively that that was where he wanted to keep Venky all day. He waved his bat towards the boundary and said a number of rather rude things. Venky, understandably angry, bowled him with his very next ball. It was sweet revenge. Having got his man, it was now his turn and he showed Aamer Sohail the way to the dressing room.
The team was pumped up after this incident and we soon took control of the match. Prasad picked up two more crucial wickets and Ajay Jadeja and I bowled ten reasonably tight overs between us in the middle, while Kumble chipped in with three wickets. In what turned out to be his final international innings, Javed Miandad was run out for 38, ending a glorious career for Pakistan. Despite some good late hitting by wicketkeeper Rashid Latif, which caused us a bit of a panic, we were on the ascendancy throughout and in the end won the match fairly comfortably, by 39 runs, prompting celebrations all over the country.
On our way back to the hotel we could see people lining the streets and they were throwing garlands and flowers at the team bus. In the hotel too we were being treated differently. We stayed on in Bangalore for one extra day and spent a relaxed few hours in the pool the next afternoon. We could sense that the staff were trying to please us and were looking at us differently. They were looking after our every need and when somebody ordered prawns, three different varieties were served, all on the house. We were being treated like royalty and it felt wonderful to see the country so happy and proud.
Things fall apart
We were due to play Sri Lanka in the semi-final at Eden Gardens on 13 March. We arrived in Kolkata two days before and the first thing that struck us on landing at the airport was the security. There were commandos everywhere and no fans were allowed near the hotel lobby. This was no ordinary match.
Someone had mentioned to us that the surface at Eden Gardens had been relaid with soil brought over from Australia. The first look at the surface seemed to support this statement, with the pitch apparently hard and firm. In fact, it did look like a typical Australian wicket. On that basis, it was unanimously decided that we should field first if we won the toss, particularly because Sri Lanka had chased very well throughout the tournament. Their openers, Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana, had been going for the bowling in the first fifteen overs and had given them fantastic starts in most matches. They had beaten us in the pool stage of the competition and it was important to take early wickets and put them under pressure.
We won the toss and put the Sri Lankans in and got off to a great start, picking up Sanath for one and Kalu for zero. They both got out playing cut shots to third man, vindicating our belief that the wicket was hard and firm. It was only when I came on to bowl that I realized we had misread the wicket. The ball started to hold up and was stopping on the batsmen. The top layer might have been firm enough, but immediately below the surface it was loose. It would clearly not last the full hundred overs and it became even more important to keep Sri Lanka down to a manageable score. Though we managed to restrict Sri Lanka to 251 in their fifty overs, that proved far too many in the end.
When it was our turn to bat the wicket had started doing all sorts of things. The ball was turning and holding up and batting was extremely difficult. Opening, I scored 65 but got out rather strangely to a ball from Sanath Jayasuriya. He was bowling left-arm orthodox spin and the ball hit my pad and rolled off to the on side. I thought there was a quick single and stepped out of the crease. Too late, I saw that the ball had stopped very close to Kaluwitharana, the keeper, and there was no way I could finish the run, but by then it was too late. He dislodged the stumps in a flash and I didn’t bother waiting for the third umpire’s decision because I knew I was out. It was a long and frustrating walk back to the pavilion and I could sense it would not be easy for the batsmen who followed.
Sure enough, we soon lost wickets in a heap, handing Sri Lanka the game. The crowd, desperate for an Indian victory, grew increasingly restless and disrupted the game by throwing things onto the field. By then, however, the match was all over. Our World Cup dream lay shattered and there was a deathly silence in the dressing room.
This time the journey from the ground to the hotel was painful and when we reached the hotel we realized that everything had changed. We were made to feel as if we had done something seriously wrong. There was no doubt we had let our fans down, but we were hurting as much as anybody. It was a long and difficult night as we sat around picking over the way the match had played out.
We left Kolkata
by the first available flight the following morning and I still found it difficult to accept that Sri Lanka and not India would be travelling to Pakistan to play in the World Cup final against Australia. We had done so well to win the quarter-final against Pakistan, the high point of our World Cup. Personally, I had had a good tournament and ended up with the most runs in the competition – 523, with two centuries and three half-centuries – but that was of little consolation. Our biggest mistake was misreading the Eden Gardens pitch. That is what cost us the game.
Indian cricket was not going through a good phase. With the World Cup dream over, team morale was low and we had little time to recover before a difficult tour of England, which we lost 1–0, though we did discover two superb talents in Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly along the way. Though I scored a couple of centuries in this series, at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, and Sourav scored two consecutive hundreds, on debut at Lord’s and at Trent Bridge, we weren’t able to make our way back after losing the first of the three Tests. The England bowlers, led by Chris Lewis, Dominic Cork and Alan Mullally, did well throughout the series and run-scoring was never easy. Nasser Hussain, the England skipper, also had a good series, leading from the front all the way.
Off the pitch, one incident from this tour is difficult to forget. Sourav Ganguly and Navjot Sidhu were travelling on the Tube in London when a few young guys, who’d probably had a bit too much to drink, boarded the train. For some reason they started making gestures at Sourav and Navjot and eventually one of them threw a beer can at Navjot, who promptly stood up to confront them. It turned ugly and a fight ensued, until the train reached the next station, where their attackers staggered off – but then one of them came back onto the train and started waving a gun at Navjot. At this, Sourav’s first reaction was to drop to the ground and cover his face in fright, but then he started pleading with the boy and dragged Navjot away as quickly as he could. Looking back at the incident, it seems a funny scene in some ways, but it must have been pretty scary at the time!
Playing It My Way: My Autobiography Page 12
