During the 1996 World Cup, Avijit Ghosh was in Faislabad reporting on the Sri Lanka-England quarterfinal the day India beat Pakistan. He recalls how Pakistan reacted to the defeat...
Everybody remembers that game. The India-Pakistan 1996 World Cup match where Ajay Jadeja spanked Waqar Younis for a couple of overs and overnight became a poster boy. For generations hockey and cricket have served as proxy platforms of war. That game was meant to settle every issue of national pride and manhood. Much before the first ball was bowled, the air was charged with dynamite. And everyone was ready to be blown over.
In Pakistan, everybody seemed to be on speed: energised, excited and chatty. The joke was that doctors treating hypertension had long queues outside their clinics. There was no overtly anti-India frenzy on the street. But it was evident that losing wasn't really an option.
Taxi drivers, TV hosts, waiters and former cricketers -- everybody was convinced Pakistan would win the game. They had an unshakeable belief in the superiority of their team. We are better, so we will win: that's what most of them said. And, most informed neutrals admitted that the green and white guys looked meaner, readier, classier.
The Pakistanis had one major stress factor though: Sachin Tendulkar. In the previous games, his scores were: 127 not out, 70, 90, 137 and 3. Tendulkar, then 22 years old, looked imperious, almost infallible. Almost every Pakistani believed that the Mumbai batting genius was the only hurdle between them and a place in the last four.
A salesman at Lahore's Liberty Market, however, was confident that the Pakistani pace attack would get him early. "If you look at his record against us, it isn't much to talk about," he winked. The shop owner gave me a 10% discount when he came to know that I was a journalist. The next day we drove to Faislabad in a shared Toyota taxi. The Indian automobile revolution was still a few years away. It was a sharp contrast from the yellow and black Ambassador taxi that we normally travelled in.
On March 9, 1996, the day India took on Pakistan in Bangalore, I was reporting on another quarterfinal game: England versus Sri Lanka. Nobody, including the 1,500 spectators in Faislabad's Iqbal Stadium seemed remotely interested in the on-field proceedings. You could hear the running commentary on the transistor radio in the stands.
The press box was strangely nervous though some journos also kept cracking jokes. And there were conspiracy theories about Wasim Akram's injury that kept him out of the game. India made a slow but solid start. When Tendulkar was bowled, someone told an Indian journo, "Aapki to aadhi team out ho gayee." He quipped, "Aadhi nahi sahib, poori out ho gayee."
The England-Lanka game got over quickly. Unlike the one fought out in Bangalore, it was a day game. By the time we finished filing our reports and entered our hotel, the Pakistan reply had reached a critical stage. At the lobby, I recall seeing a few tense faces watching TV. When Salim Malik was out, one of us spontaneously exclaimed, "He is gone." Angry heads instantly turned around. But things kept going from bad to worse for Pakistan. Nobody spoke. By 9.30pm, it was all over.
I stepped out of the hotel and walked the streets hoping to soak in the general mood. The silence was deafening.
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