A forgettable X'mas 12 years back

This was one Christmas the Indian cricket administrators want to forget. We are talking about December 25, 1997 - the day which saw the first ever abandonment of an ODI due to an unplayable pitch at the Nehru Stadium, Indore. Unlike Kotla, where play went on till the 23rd over, this India-Lanka match was called off after just three overs.
Interestingly, there were reservations about the pitch - a dry, powdery surface - before the match itself.So much so that the groundsmen, after the Indian team management’s objection, had begun to prepare an alternate surface on the eve of the match! The Lankans, who came to inspect the pitch later in the afternoon, were taken aback to see two pitches being rolled. ‘‘They (Indians) wanted some grass on the pitch,’’ was the explanation given by the ground in-charge, Narendra Menon, who was also an international umpire, to prepare another pitch.
Eventually, the match referee, justice Ahmed Ebrahim of Zimbabwe, had to step in to resolve the issue. ‘‘The pitch prepared by the groundsmen earlier is retained," was his verdict. In hindsight, it was a bad judgment as the match lasted only 19 minutes! But the other pitch seemed to have passed the test as it withstood a 25-over exhibition match, played to pacify the capacity crowd of around 30,000 at the request of then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh.
Indian captain Sachin Tendulkar, who had lost the toss, opened the attack with Javagal Srinath and off-spinner Rajesh Chauhan to counter the explosive Lankan opening pair of Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana. While Srinath’s first over was largely incident-free, barring the dismissal of Kaluwitharana, Chauhan’s first delivery turned square and went for four byes. The devil in the pitch had woken up.
Srinath’s second over exposed its dangerous nature. Some deliveries lay low, others flew past the batsmen’s head. Eventually, Roshan Mahanama was struck a painful blow on the knuckles. That was it. The batsmen complained to the umpires - Davinder Sharma (Delhi) and Subroto Porel (Bengal) - and Lankan skipper Arjuna Ranatunga walked in to walk out.
Though the decision to call off the match was taken soon after, the official verdict to the media was released only after the conclusion of the exhibition match.