26 September 1999 was a special day for Indian cricket and Sunil Joshi who did an amazing thing that is unforgettable for the Indian cricket fans.
The left-arm spinner Sunil Joshi was then 29-year-old when India was playing against South Africa at Nairobi in the quadrangular ODI series (LG Cup). It was their opening game of the tournament where South Africa decided to bat first after winning the toss.
South African openers Boeta Dippenaar and Herschelle Gibbs provided a 32-run partnership before their batting collapse started that was led by Sunil Joshi. Soon, South Africa was struggling on 45/4 while Joshi already picked up three wickets and the other was run-out (Mark Boucher 0). In that period, Joshi dismissed both the openers – Dippenaar (17) and Gibbs (18) – and the skipper Hansie Cronje (2).
After that, Jacques Kallis and Dale Benkenstein had a 38-run partnership for the fifth wicket before another batting collapse. Starting from 83/4, soon South Africa went down to 85/7 where the off-spinner Nikhil Chopra started that collapse (Benkenstein 18) and then Joshi picked up the other two wickets (Jonty Rhodes 1 and Shaun Pollock 0).
Joshi finally completed his 10-over quota as he finished with a magnificent bowling figure of 10-6-6-5 with the economy rate 0.60.
It took 10 more overs to bundle down South Africa as their innings ended on 117 in 48 overs. Jacques Kallis (38) scored the highest runs in that innings while the openers and Benkenstein were the only other batsmen to reach the double-digit marks.
Apart from Joshi, Nikhil Chopra (3/26) bagged three wickets and another off-spinner Vijay Bharadwaj (1/16) picked up one wicket in that innings.
In reply, the Indian cricket team comfortably reached that target by losing only their both openers as India scored 120/2 in 22.4 overs and won the game by eight wickets with 164 balls remaining. Indian openers Sadagoppan Ramesh and Sourav Ganguly had a 72-run partnership while both were dismissed by the off-spinner Derek Crookes after scoring 36 and 38 respectively. Vijay Bharadwaj was not out on 18 runs and Rahul Dravid played an unbeaten 9-run knock.
Here is the video of Sunil Joshi’s only five-wicket haul in ODI career:
