Nasser Hussain reveals how he orchestrated Sachin Tendulkar’s only Test stumping in 2001

Sachin Tendulkar scored 90 runs before being stumped for the only time in his Test career.

Sachin Tendulkar walks after being stumped for the first and last time in his Test careerIndian batting great Sachin Tendulkar was dismissed out stumped in Test cricket just once, by James Foster off the bowling of Ashley Giles during the 2001 England tour to India in the Bangalore Test match.

Then England captain Nasser Hussain was trying to rein in Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag from running away with the game after he had India at 121/4 and ordered Giles to bowl over the wicket into Tendulkar’s pads.

Tendulkar, while approaching a ton, moved out of his crease on one of the deliveries to get the scoring going, but Foster whipped off the bails as the batsman missed the ball and sent the Indian batting great back to the pavilion on 90.

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If Sehwag and Tendulkar are smashing you everywhere and the crowd going ballistic, ‘Sachin, Sachin!’ echoing around the ground, I would look into my bowlers’ eyes and they would be a little bit gone. So I knew the key was to silence the crowd, take the crowd out of the equation. And the only way to do that was to stop Sachin scoring,” Hussain said on the Sony Ten Pit Stop.  

Ashley Giles and England team celebrate the wicket of TendulkarHe revealed his masterplan to get Tendulkar out and said “That pitch in Bangalore as well, there was a bit of rough there, but nothing on the main pitch, it was an absolute belter. So I got Ashley [Giles], who was bowling a tight line and not just chucking it wide down leg stump. Ashley got close to the stumps and bowled quite a tight line and try to hit that rough.”

England was criticized for bowling a ‘negative line’, but Hussain could care less of what pundits thought. He walked away with a 0-1 loss when many had predicted a 0-3 whitewash for England. They had been drubbed by 10 wickets in the first match in Mohali but came back well to draw the second and third Tests.

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Sachin being Sachin, went, ‘Hold on, this is quite a cunning plan, I better just kick it away for a while.’ And obviously then the crowd went quiet and I think someone was there from England who said this is an absolute disgrace, England is using negative tactics. But it was just to silence the crowd. And it was the only time that Sachin got stumped. In the end, he had enough and ran down the pitch and got stumped by James Foster,” Hussain said.

And people have given that to me as a win. Sachin got 90 (laughs), how is getting Sachin Tendulkar out for 90 a win? Maybe India only got something like 300 (238) in the innings on a flat pitch at Bangalore and that was my win,” he signed off.

 
 

By Jatin Sharma - 21 Jun, 2020

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