Watching Kolkata watch Sachin at Eden Gardens

KOLKATA: The fourth ball of the ninth over of the morning found the crowd at the Eden Gardens in full throttle. Shane Shillingford tossed it up to Murali Vijay; the Indian opener walked past it, and was stumped. All heads turned to the pavilion towards which Vijay began his walk. No one was looking at Vijay. At 9.40 am, the moment this Test had been building up to arrived. We saw the familiar figure walk out, slipping on his gloves, loosening his body, breaking into a jog, the sun sliding off his bat.

The applause that began rippling out from either side of the pavilion turned into a wave, then a huge wave. It cascaded across the stadium, and finally drowned it. By the time Sachin Tendulkar took guard, not a pair of hands in the stadium was left unsore.

In the opening overs, the crowd had offered Shikhar Dhawan and Vijay the sincere but slightly impatient cheers accorded to supporting bands preceding the headline act in a rock concert.

When Shillingford bowled Dhawan, the small boy two rows in front of me pumped his fist. “At least till the fall of the second wicket, there will be more West Indies supporters here today than India ones,” remarked one of a band of five young college students who — in the manner that only college students can afford — plan to be at the ground for every day of the Test.

Tendulkar’s defensive shot off his first ball was met with the sort of applause that greets a century. A leave off a Tino Best delivery elicited the same sort of response. A punch to point got him off the mark and the crowd to their feet.

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