IND vs BAN: Transformed Chepauk pitch offers a fever-dream for pacers

Sit back, close your eyes and recollect the great spells at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. The first two reels will be that of two young spinners one bespectacled and other with a turban bamboozling the batters like magicians.

Narendra Hirwani walked away with a 16-wicket match haul against West Indies here in 1986, while 15 wickets were added to Harbhajan Singh's tally in 2001 against Australia.

So, it was quite natural to expect two modern day greats in Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja ripping through Bangladesh batting line-up at Chepauk to keep up with the tradition.

But pacers Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep shared eight wickets among them to meddle with history and expectations.

Such dominance by pacers was unknown at this venue since the late 70s. In 1979, a three-pronged pace attack comprising Kapil Dev, Karsan Ghavri and Dhiraj Parsana took 11 wickets among them in India's three-wicket win over the mighty West Indians.

Since then, this has always been