Feroz Shah Kotla. February 7, 1999.
A target of 420 started looking less than threatening when Saeed Anwar and Shahid Afridi added 100 at a brisk rate. But as in such cases, all that mattered was the initial blow.
Afridi flirted with the short of length ball outside off-stump. Up went Anil Kumble in appeal, and his former teammate AV Jayaprakash raised the finger with characteristic gusto. Afridi was far from happy, but the dent had been made. The very next ball caught Ijaz Ahmed plumb in front, and skipper Wasim Akram's face as he sat in the dressing room said it all. The visitors knew they were in trouble.
One by one the wickets fell. All of them to Kumble. Harbhajan Singh was bowling well, but had not made his way into the scorecard.
When Saqlain Mushtaq was hit low on the pads and it was 9 for 198, Kumble stood on the brink of history. At the other end, statemate Javagal Srinath obligingly started bowling wide of the stumps.
Finally, Wasim Akram's inside edge was gobbled up by VVS Laxman at short-leg. After lunch on that fourth day of the Test, Kumble had bowled 124 balls on the trot and had bagged 10 for 47. His final figures read 10 for 74.
That would be etched in the annals of history and eventually become part of the great man's twitter handle. @anilkumble1074 has more than 4 million followers at the time of writing.
Text: Arunabha Sengupta
Illustration: Maha