10.34pm IST Mukesh Kumar is having a long discussion with his captain Rohit Sharma. With 18 to defend in the final over of the third T20I in Bengaluru, after India had walloped 212 for 4, he’s already conceded 16 off the first five balls.

There’s a lot of hand-waving and gesturing going around as the subdued crowd finds its voice once again, filling the Chinnaswamy Stadium with ‘India, India’ chants. At the other end Gulbadin Naib is batting like a man possessed. He’s clattered 53 off 22. Afghanistan need three off one, but finding the boundary is easier than running three at this venue.

Mukesh runs in and nails a wide yorker almost on the tramline outside of. Naib is good enough to connect and everything that had slowed down up until that point speeds up 2X. The non-striker Sharafuddin Ashraf sprints and so does Naib. Rinku Singh hares to his right from deep cover but his throw to the wicketkeeper is weak. Naib makes it back for two but the third is out of the question. Cue Ian Smith’s iconic line “We’re going to a Super Over”!

Naib looks spent on his haunches, the Afghanistan dugout appear stunned, Rohit and Mukesh allow themselves a smile, and there is absolute bedlam in the stands. After nearly three hours and 36 minutes, 40 overs and 424 runs, while the rest of the city is close to shutting shop for the night, the cricket is still alive.

10.42pm, the first Super Over : Despite the inevitable hassle of a late commute home, barely a soul has left the ground. The air is filled with tension and anticipation. The DJ tries to play to the crowd but the occasion doesn’t need music.

India appear relaxed. Avesh Khan cracks a joke, leaving Kuldeep Yadav and Virat Kohli in splits. Mukesh has the unfunny job of bowling the Super Over.

Afghanistan appear more serious. Rahmanullah Gurbaz is padded up while Naib never even took his pair off after the 20th over of a stupendous chase. He looks like he’s in a trance. Has he even blinked in the last half hour?

Naib takes strike and the roar reaches a crescendo as Mukesh nails his yorker again. The ball is played to long-on but this time the throw is anything but weak. Kohli fires it in on the bounce to Sanju Samson and Naib has no hope of completing the second. Pandemonium in the stands.

Gurbaz and Mohammad Nabi manage a four and a six but it is the events off the final ball that takes the intensity into overdrive. After missing a yorker, Nabi attempts to run a bye to the wicketkeeper. Samson throws the ball towards the bowler but it hits Nabi’s leg – he didn’t know the throw was coming at him and did not change direction – and they run two more overthrows to Kohli at long-on.

Rohit is fuming, both hands in the air as he protests with a “come on!” Kohli stops the ball with his foot and gestures in annoyance even before throwing towards the pitch. Words are exchanged; Kohli sarcastically claps and flashes a thumbs up; Nabi doesn’t back down. No one’s laughing now. A dead rubber? What’s that?

After the game, when the adrenaline had slowed, India’s coach Rahul Dravid played down that flash point. “Sometimes when you play for your country, there is so much passion and emotion. Nothing in the rule stops you from actually running those runs,” he said. “There are some frustrations that at times can happen but it’s okay as long as it does not cross the line.”

Back in the middle, India need 17 off their Super Over and are opening with Rohit and Yashasvi Jaiswal. After scoring only two off the first two balls, Rohit hammers Azmatullah Omarzai for sixes off the next two. He takes a single off the fifth, and with India needing two off the last ball and Jaiswal on strike, Rohit retires seemingly to have the faster runner Rinku at the non-striker’s end. After the game, Dravid told the broadcasters: “[Rohit] Taking himself out was Ashwin-level thinking. That’s Ash-level thinking.”

Rinku eventually scampers a single after Jaiswal can only toe-end his shot along the ground to the keeper. Gurbaz collects and chooses not to risk an overthrow by attempting a run out, sending the game – for the first time in T20 internationals and only the second in all T20 cricket – into a second Super Over.

This type of tiebreaker – Super Over after Super Over after Super Over – is relatively recent in cricket. It replaced the infamous boundary-count back rule that decided the 2019 World Cup final in England’s favour against New Zealand.

Rohit, though, has been here before. He was the Mumbai Indians captain when their IPL game against Punjab Kings was decided only after two Super Overs in Dubai in October 2020. “We don’t even get a third hit in Test matches,” he said after the game in Bengaluru. “It was in the IPL where we played two Super Overs and I batted three times there as well [Rohit batted twice in that game].”

11.06pm, the second Super Over: Scenes of utter confusion in Bengaluru. Among the fans but also the players. There are hands on heads and hugs as heightened excitement melds with mental and physical exhaustion. This time Rohit does come out to bat, along with Rinku, for a third hit. Whether he should have been allowed to is another story.

Given this was only the second time a T20 had gone into a second Super Over, everyone was figuring out what’s what. Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott said later that he wanted Omarzai to bowl again but found out the rules stated: [a]ny bowler who bowled in the previous Super Over shall be ineligible to bowl in the subsequent Super Over.

“We wanted Azmat to bowl the second over again, but those sort of things will be explained … because it has happened, these things will be explained and done in writing in the future,” Trott said.

So instead of Omarzai, it’s the left-arm seamer Fareed Ahmed with the ball. Rohit, who has already scored 121 off 69 and 13 off 4 in this match, clobbers the first two balls for a six and four and then takes a single. India go on to lose their two wickets off the next two balls, leaving Afghanistan needing 12 to win in their Super Over.

Now Naib can’t bat again because he was dismissed in the first Super Over so its Nabi who walks out with Gurbaz, both of whom can bat again because they ended the first Super Over not out. Avesh Khan is warming up to bowl for India and speaks to the bowling coach Paras Mhambrey. But Rohit has a late change of heart and gives the ball to the legspinner Ravi Bishnoi.

“I think Rohit went with his gut,” Dravid said later. “I think he felt that the spinner had a better chance to take two wickets. It was one of those days where 11 wasn’t probably a huge score and with the power they had, they probably would’ve got the 12 runs. So, you needed to take two wickets.”

The decision proves a masterstroke. Bishnoi has both Nabi and Gurbaz caught by Rinku on the straight boundary within the first three balls.

Nearly four and a half hours after the first ball was bowled, this game is finally over. It had begun as a dead rubber and ended as the most glorious of dead rubbers.