And with that we were down to it. Six from the last ball. What irony! Miandad purveyor of the single most famous stroke in Pakistan's history, perhaps even India's history, shouted out and gesticulated avidly from the dressing room. He wanted to do it himself, he was itching to do it himself, he would give anything to do it himself. But Moin had to do it. Before India was the opportunity to lay to rest a ghost, to draw a line. Ganguly made a tinker with the field, sensibly calling up fine leg into the circle to install extra protection at cow corner.

Nehra hared in with short steps, curved as a bow but piercing like an arrow through the thick, quite unbelievable layers of noise. Whether it was a yorker gone wrong or whether Nehra indeed planned it that way, as he was to claim later, it will never be known, but the most momentous delivery of his life came out as a rapid groin-high full-toss. It started leg, angling, swinging even a touch, away into middle, rushing Moin, who nevertheless appeared for a split second positioned to deposit it as per requirement. But it was quicker than expected, and it was higher than expected, and as he leaned back and lashed, his right hand slipped off the handle and the ball slid off the face and looped lamely in the air - O Moin! What have you done! - and into the hands of Zaheer Khan at mid-off who whooped a triple whoop which rang starkly in the naked silence of the arena. Then after a few seconds of recovery, as the Indians clustered together in triumph, applause poured forth from every direction, and it poured and it poured and it poured in absolute unison. It poured till the hair stood on end, till one felt at one with it, of it really. No one spoke in these moments, the most moving of moments, a people reaching out to another.