1989!
Venue: The living hall!
To be exact: The black and white videocon T.V in the living hall, showing an exhibition match played between India and pakistan ( to be more exact, in Peshawar).
The kid (;) me ) was disappointed that a 50 overs official game was truncated to a 20 overs exhibition match due to bad light.
India was chasing 157. In those days India rarely won against pakistan, each victory was hailed as miracle!
Indian captain Srikanth had already lost hope of winning (Task was too daunting ... 69 runs of 5 overs) and was playing too playfully as it was an exhibition match!
Then a small kid entered the stadium. I had never seen this kid before. I thought he was from Assam Ranji team, may be his facial appearance would have misguided me ( And also my confident knowledgeable sister was affirming the fact that he was from Assam, hence no doubt raised what so ever!)
The Kid was two and a half times taller than the bat he was holding and somewhat taller than the stumps!
Curly curly hair, barely no mush, unique boyish stance and an exuberant confidence as if he already had fifty test centuries in his bag ( who would have thought eventually he would?)
Within few minutes after the kid took the crease, the confident (as he was having already two wickets in his back pockets) Mustaq Ahamed's (another somewhat chubby kid little older than Tendulkar) couple of spinning balls vanished in some black hole among the spectators. Whole jubilant Pakistan crowd was stunned along with the Indian skipper Srikanth at the other end , wondering... "hey kid! who coached you, nobody plays such shots in India currently ... of course, except me occasionally!"
Then came the deadly Abdul Qadir. Deadly! yeah truly... his records against Indians would prove the justice of the chosen adjective. I didn't know what mesmerized and bamboozled India batsmen, whether his unique dancing way of reaching the crease or his ever spinning balls' treacherous way of trespassing our bats men's Indian Gate (better we could call it 'gateway') defense!
But Qadir might avoided saying those words to terrify the kid . After all that was not necessary, after all that was fate... entry of a great star should have some dramatic element, hence it would become an interesting legendary tale that would pass on from generation to generation along with the hard earned (hardly spent)and saved movable and immovable properties.
Those words are "Bachchon ko kyon mar rahe ho? Hamein bhi maar dikhao"
(" why are you hitting the kids ? Hit me too!)
What he said was like ... spending your own money to do black magic against yourself and also like... taking the crawling chameleon on the wall and putting it under your dhothi! ( you have to be a Tamilian to admire the intricacies of these wise-word comparisons)
Thats what the Kid did... hit him hard!
The over read like below...
Bang, silence, slash, bang, bang, bang!
6,o,4,6,6,6!
Everybody who witnessed the over gasped ! The young Kid on its first outing for hunting , was tearing down a lion to pieces. This would happen only in fairy tales named like " Nanarnia and Nine Shrek dwarfs " or something like that.
But it had really happened !
The worst over of Qadir in his career ( fortunately the match was not official) had been the launch pad the most powerful Indian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile named Sachin!
At last the equation tuned out to be 4 out of one ball, but the kid couldn't make it and scrambled for one.
(Even Srikanth was charged up, after seeing the Kid's blitzkrieg and was sprinting like hare on fire, running even for slightest misfieldings)
But it was a victory, neither the crowd nor the Pakistan rejoiced, after all rejoicing is not what you do when you are shocked!
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