JOIN USAdored all over the country, Sehwag received extra-loud cheers, no surprise really because he is, after all, a Delhi boy. His half-century was greeted with thunderous applause, and he acknowledged the cheers of every section of the ground. Even he, thereore, must have been taken aback at the reaction of the fans upon his dismissal.
When the third umpire flashed the red light to confirm that he had been stumped off Devendra Bishoo, for just a split second, there was stunned silence. Then, the crowd erupted not so much in appreciation of Sehwag’s exploits, but in anticipation of the man set to walk in and, perhaps, bring up a milestone century.
The fans closest to the steps that Sachin Tendulkar had to climb down to enter the field crowded the fence for a closer look at the Master. Sehwag trudged a lonely walk back to the pavilion, his half-century completely ignored as the crowd started to look ahead. Sehwag as a forgotten man, not even a smattering of applause accompanying him out of the ground, even as the buzz of expectancy reached a crescendo when Tendulkar set his right foot on the playing arena.
Chants of ‘Sachin, Sa-chin’ rent the air, and when he produced a lovely punch off the backfoot against Devendra Bishoo that raced away to the cover fence, the noise was enough to have brought the roof down had one existed. Every run kept the countdown going, the expectation that a hundredth hundred was round the corner growing by the minute.
Delight turned to despair in less than half an hour when Tendulkar was trapped in front by Fidel Edwards. The little man shuffled across to off, but the ball missed his tilted pad and thudded on to his pad. Rod Tucker must have felt like the loneliest man in the planet when he raised his right index finger, but he had a job to do, and he did that pretty well.
The fairytale moment will have to wait, thanks to Darren Sammy’s initiative and Edwards’ skills. “Edwards is our strike bowler, and when the greatest batsman has just come in, it is better to give the ball to our best bowler so that we can try and get Sachin out when he is just in,” said the skipper of the decision to bring Edwards back into the attack immediately after Tendulkar’s arrival. “That was the plan and it worked. Fidel was rewarded for his hard work.”
There was no reward for Tendulkar’s fans, at least on Monday. The wait continues.