It was coming up to half past midnight on a chilly night at the Downing Stadium in New York in May 1989 when the excitable chattering crowd finally dispersed.

The floodlights at the venue on Randall’s Island – repaired and used for the first time in years – were still on, but you could still just about see the skyscrapers in Manhattan twinkling in the distance.

This was the place where Jesse Owens trained and where Pele made his debut for New York Cosmos. Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and Ray Charles all played concerts there.

Downing Stadium was also the location for the first meeting in the Americas between India and Pakistan.

Forgot whoever was playing at Carnegie Hall or on Broadway that night, this was the place to be if you were a cricket fan in the Big Apple.

Yet much of what happened has been forgotten.

It was, in fact, the first of a series of three exhibitions matches. Fans had flocked, many after work, to witness a 40-over-a-side day-nighter featuring some stellar names.

Pakistan were skippered by Imran Khan and had many of the ‘Cornered Tigers’ who would win the World Cup in 1992 including Javed Miandad, Saleem Malik and Mushtaq Ahmed in their side.

Dilip Vengsarkar captained an India team including Mohammad Azharuddin, Kapil Dev, and Sanjay Manjrekar.

India all-rounder Ravi Shastri helped facilitate the matches against Pakistan, plus an earlier fixture against West Indies.

“In many ways we were the pioneers by coming to the United States,” Shastri told BBC Sport.

“To do something like that back then really was quite a brave thing. After that there were games right through the 1990s in different parts of the US.”