It’s March 17, 2007 and we are at the Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain for the eighth match of the 2007 ICC World Cup between India and Bangladesh. Twilight is slowly but steadily setting into the stadium that is not-so-full, but more importantly, there is a bigger upset brewing in the background. At 191-5, the scores are level and Bangladesh are one hit away from registering what will be the biggest win in their history.  As the camera pans towards the captains of both the teams, it perfectly captures the emotions - on one hand - there is a dejected Rahul Dravid wanting to erase the events of the preceding six hours from history, and on the other, there is Habibul Bashar with a wild grin, who is blushing, clapping and cheering his men out in the middle. But the job is not done yet, and the final act of this match will be played out by two young men - for Bangladesh, a 19-year-old Mushfiqur Rahim and for India, a 23-year-old Munaf Patel. But before we get to the epilogue, let us take a look at the events that led us to this crazy, once-improbable moment.   

At one point, though, it looked like one member of the aforementioned ‘big four’ - Sourav Ganguly - was not even going to make the cut for the tournament. Yes, after Greg Chappell was named the Head Coach of India in 2005, the Aussie indulged in a public spat with the then-skipper Ganguly. Chappell stated that Ganguly was ‘physically and mentally unfit to lead the team’ and this spat resulted in the left-hander being first removed as captain before being phased out of the team. This is also the reason why Rahul Dravid led the team in the tournament. But after a 16-month hiatus from the format, Ganguly returned to the side in January 2007 and scored 4 fifties in his first 6 innings post the comeback to cement his spot. 

But India weirdly walked into the tournament quietly confident, knowing they had been drawn in a group alongside Bangladesh, Bermuda and Sri Lanka. They had beaten Sri Lanka in a bilateral series just a month before the World Cup, Bermuda were minnows and Bangladesh, well, they just loved playing Bangladesh. In fact, prior to the match-up, India had lost to Bangladesh JUST ONCE in their entire history. And that defeat came way back in 2004, a series where they did not have the services of both Sachin and Dravid.  

A lot had changed in Bangladesh camp since 2004, though. Veterans Khaled Mahmud and Khaled Mashud, who had played a total of 203 ODIs between them, had hung up their boots and the team were also missing the services of pacer Tapash Baisya, a vital cog in their XI, due to injury. Skipper Habibul Bashar was also nearing the end of his career and the team was in a transitional phase of sorts. That prompted them to go full-on, on a ‘youth-first’ approach. 11 of their 15 players in their squad were aged 23 or under and in Tamim Iqbal, Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim, they had blood in three promising youngsters who looked like they had the world at their feet. You might need to remember these names, as it will come handy as we progress.

And as we can see from the big moment above, clearly, something worked from them, as they are just one run shy off causing an upset that could potentially rock world cricket. So, how did a side that was just playing its 150th ODI match, chasing in a big game, bring it to the point where they were just a hit away from beating a side that had played 493 more matches than them?

Remember the three names - Tamim Iqbal, Mushfiqur Rahim and Shakib Al Hasan - that I had asked you to remember? Yeah, so these three kids, who were 18, 19 and 20 and were playing their 5th, 12th and 21st ODIs respectively, decided that they wanted to teach the Indian bowlers a lesson. It all started with Tamim. The 19-year-opener, who was a completely unknown entity at the time of him walking out to bat, shook the bowlers with his domineering approach. He dismantled the pacers - Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar and Munaf Patel - with ruthless aggression and his 53-ball 51, which included two humongous sixes, completely took the Indians aback. You could understand why, though. In his only four ODI innings prior to this one, Tamim had a high score of just 30.

But it can’t all be due to these three players, could it? For India to have found themselves in such a precarious position in the first game of the World Cup, and that too after winning the toss, something, clearly, must have gone terribly wrong with the bat. In fact, there were many things that went wrong with the bat for the Men in Blue.  The trio of Sachin, Sehwag and Dravid could manage a total of just 23 runs between them and ironically, Ganguly was the only batsman to pass the fifty-run mark. You could even say that they were strangled by spin - the Bangladesh spinners returned figures of 30-4-117-6.  

So how and why were India not able to do the same - choke the batsmen with spin - to the Tigers? Had you paid keen attention, you might have noticed the name of a certain Anil Kumble missing. Ganguly was not the only senior member who did not have the greatest of times in the Greg Chappell era, at least in limited-overs. Kumble, who was then India’s highest wicket-taker with 334 scalps to his name, prior to the World Cup, had only featured in three ODIs in the entire calendar year and was controversially omitted from the starting XI.

And thus, here we are at the big moment. It all boils down to this. The score is 191/5, Munaf Patel has the ball in his hand and getting ready to face him is Mushfiqur Rahim. Rahim knows that he is one run away from not just winning the match for his country, but writing a new sporting chapter in his nation’s history. He knows he’s one run away from immortalizing himself amongst the sporting legends of his country, had fans sing songs about him for centuries to come and have an ageless story to tell his grandchildren. He also knows that he’s one run away from potentially forever tainting the legacy of Sachin, Ganguly, Dravid and Kumble, puncture the heart of a billion Indians and create a ripple so powerful that it pulverizes the entirety of the country. For Bangladesh, this could potentially be a moment that they would want to remember for the rest of their lives and for India, a day that they would want to erase from history without any traces. This is it.

Welcome to a moment in history.