The India-Australia Chennai Test, 1998 was the second match of the 3-match Test series between the two teams. The series had attracted a lot of attentions from the cricket enthusiasts of India and the Indian team was eager to give a good performance in the series against the world champions. The match is best remembered for wonderful batting performance from Sachin Tendulkar and Navjot Singh Sidhu in India`s second innings that helped India a lot to win the match with a good margin of 179 runs.

The Indian captain, Mohammad Azharuddin decided to bat first after winning the toss and his teammates responded to the decision quite well. The two Indian openers, Nayan Mongia and Navjot Singh Sidhu made a wonderful 122 runs opening partnership for India and provided their team a solid start in the match. However, the Australians came back in the match nicely by taking 3 quick wickets of Mongia, Sidhu and Tendulkar within a span of only 8 runs. India was 130-3 at that stage and then Rahul Dravid and Azharuddin made a partnership of 56 runs to rescue their team from the loss. However, the Indian team failed to capitalise on the wonderful start that its openers provided and as it continued losing wickets in regular intervals, India eventually got all our on a score of only 257 runs in the first innings.

The Australia team played well in their first innings, after restricting India for 257 runs in the first innings. Though the team failed to get a good start, it scored 300+ runs in the innings and took a good lead. The Indian opening bowlers like Javagal Srinath and Harvinder Singh did well to strike twice in the Australia top order in the first few overs of their first innings. The Australian innings was once reduced to 119-5 at a stage of the match and their miseries continued, as they lost wickets in regular intervals. Among the failure of most of the Australian batsmen, only the batsmen like Mark Waugh, Ian Healy and G Robertson played well to help their team get past 300 runs in the first innings. Waugh, Healy and Robertson scored 66, 90 and 57 runs, respectively in the innings and Australia finished the first innings on a score of 328 runs. The legendary Indian spinner, Anil Kumble took 4 wickets for 103 runs to cause most of the damage to the Aussies and the other spinner, Venkatapati Raju took 3 wickets for 54 runs.

The Indian team showed a much better and improved performance in the second innings of the match and Sachin Tendulkar became the star for India in the second innings. Almost all the top order Indian batsmen played well in this innings and made their own contributions to the team`s total. After Sidhu and Mongia provided a good start by making a good opening partnership of 43 runs, the other batsmen continued the tempo and making partnerships was the main key for India`s huge total in the second innings. Sachin Tendulkar played an extraordinary innings of 155 runs in the innings to lead the other batsmen in the run fest. He scored 155 runs from only 191 balls and the other Indian batsmen also played well in the innings. The batsmen like Navjot Singh Sidhu, Rahul Dravid, Mohammad Azharuddin and Saurav Ganguly gave adequate support to Tendulkar in many occasions. While Sidhu scored 64 and Dravid scored 56 runs, the contributions of Azharuddin and Ganguly were 64 and 30 runs, respectively. India eventually declared its second innings on 418-4 and gave Australia a target of 347 runs to win the match.

With an achievable target of 348 runs to win the match, the Australia team faced some early blows from the Indian bowlers. The Indian spinner like Kumble and Raju caused most of the damages to Australia in the innings and Srinath accompanies them well by picking up early wickets. Srinath struck for the first time in the Australian innings, when he removed Michael Slater from the crease with a wonderful delivery. Kumble then took the wickets of Greg Blewett and Mark Taylor within a short span and made the Aussie scoreboard read 31-3. Kumble took yet another wicket, that of Mark Waugh soon and as Raju also joined him soon, Australia got into a great trouble on the score of 96-7. Ian Healy and Shane Warne then tried their best to make a come back and made a good partnership of 57 runs for the eighth wicket. However, as soon as Chauhan broke the partnership by picking up the wicket of Shane Warne, the Australian innings came to an end and Australia eventually scored 168 runs in their second innings. It was a wonderful 179 runs victory for India in the match and the victory was sweeter considering the fact that Australia was dominating the world cricket at that point of time. Anil Kumble took 4 wickets for 46 runs in the innings and Raju took 3 wickets for 31 runs in the innings to help India win the match smoothly.