Old Trafford had never seen anything like it. It felt like a more innocent time, two years before the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, but even so, security was more significant than for any cricket match ever staged on British soil. It was not just India versus Pakistan at a vital juncture of the 1999 World Cup, but a match between nations at war.

Twenty years ago, a flare-up in the decades-long Kashmir dispute centred on 16,000ft-high mountain ridges either side of Kargil and coincided, much to the angst of the World Cup organisers, with the fixture 4,000 miles away in Manchester. As a result, the match did not lack for added attention here — even the Times Literary Supplement sent