Eden Gardens, 13 March 1996

Chasing 252 in a World Cup semi-final, India slid from 98 for one to 120 for eight. The crowd started fires and threw bottles. Match referee Clive Lloyd abandoned the game and awarded it to Sri Lanka. Vinod Kambli walked off in tears, and that image outlived the match.

What the scorecard shows

Sri Lanka made 251 for 8. Aravinda de Silva made 66 from 47 balls with fourteen fours and was player of the match; Roshan Mahanama retired hurt on 58. India's reply reached 98 before Sachin Tendulkar was stumped for 65, and then eight wickets fell for 22 runs. Sanath Jayasuriya took 3 for 12.

Two details on the scorecard matter more than the rest. The toss reads: India, elected to field first. And the result reads: Sri Lanka won by default.

Full scorecard: India v Sri Lanka, 1st Semi-Final, Eden Gardens, 13 March 1996 →

The allegation

Fifteen years later Kambli said on television that he doubted the game — specifically, that India had agreed to bat first and that Mohammad Azharuddin then chose to field. The scorecard confirms the second half of that: India did field first, under lights, at a ground where batting first had won four of the previous five day-night matches.

It confirms nothing about the first half, which is the part that would matter.

What was never done

Azharuddin, by then serving a life ban for match-fixing, dismissed the claim flatly. Team manager Ajit Wadekar said they simply misread the pitch. Team-mates denied it.

There was no inquiry. There still hasn't been one. A World Cup semi-final was abandoned in front of a burning stand, an allegation was later made on national television by a man who was at the crease, and no cricket authority has ever formally examined either event. The absence is not evidence of anything. It is just an absence, thirty years old, and permanent.

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No. 3 in Mysteries, a series of 11.