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If you believe the commentators on the Indian broadcast, the entire cricketing world ceased any action and watched in a hush when Sachin Tendulkar strode to the wicket for his final first-class fixture.
What, then, was going to happen when the great one made his way onto the ground in Kolkata for his penultimate Test match?
It was the last time the fine people of that city would see him play cricket in the flesh, and the din from the cheers, banging of drums and miscellaneous cries of joy certainly was loud.
Almost as loud as when he hauled in a ball on the boundary the day before; if you’ll believe it, that crowd was bigger that day than the one there to see Sachin bat on day two.
There were no rose petals for Tendulkar. Those might come in Mumbai.
It was a strange feeling. Not one person was interested in seeing a contest. Sachin was the sole point of interest.
The West Indies were hauled onto the field as a sort of sacrificial lamb, upon which Sachin could wave his mighty MRF wand to reach the magical three figures.
But English umpire Nigel Llong, surely the most wanted man in India about now, put paid to that.
West Indies spinner Shane Shillingford, in the middle of a very good spell in which he had dismissed openers Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan, bowled the Great One a doosra that straightened slightly on off stump.
Tendulkar lunged forward only to watch the ball leap past his outside edge and onto his back thigh pad.
Llong saw the ball pitch on off, hit Sachin on off, and assumed that it was going on to hit off peg.
Not a terrible assumption, until you realise that the stumps are of finite height, and the tall offie’s top spinner was going about six inches over top of the bails.
Let’s call a spade a spade; it wasn’t the worst decision ever made.
At the same time, it’s clear that the reason Twitter exploded right afterwards was not because it was a poor decision.
No; the buzz on social media was playing on the fact that there is an obvious and proven recourse for batsmen who gets a bad verdict on the field, yet this was not an option for one of the greatest players to ever play the game.
Sachin could have been exonerated from his minor mistake by the tested, but not yet proven for some, Decision Review System.
He could have gone on to make that magical three-figure score.
The right call could have been made. But it wasn’t.
There was no option for the right call to be made. Only the umpire’s call counted for Tendulkar.
The awkward silence around DRS on the broadcast of the game only further emphasises the ridiculousness of the stance of cricket’s most powerful body, the BCCI.
They might be equipped to deal with criticism of their position, but you wouldn’t know it judging by the commentary.
Literally everyone else who is invested in cricket knew, as soon as it struck Tendulkar’s pad, that there could have been a way for the decision to be reversed.
Not acknowledging it creates an absurdity. Refusing to enter the DRS debate makes the BCCI simply a target of ridicule.
Especially when your poster boy gets gunned on bad leg before call and you’ve snookered yourself to such a degree you can’t even cry foul.
Whose fault is that?
Tendulkar can probably take a portion of blame for this. The reports, gossip and rumours are all say he is the most vehement of opponent to the DRS.
Speculation aside, I can only hope that the technology-shy BCCI have probably been nudged in what most in the cricketing world consider to be the right direction.
Surely righting the wrong of a Tendulkar howler would at least let them consider the use of technology, or let their commentators discuss the possibility of what might have happened had DRS been in use in the series.
I’m sure Rohit Sharma,Virat Kohli and Bhuvneshwar Kumar might also reconsider their positions on the review system, with their wickets all questionable as well.
Let’s hope that Sachin’s leaving Test cricket, while it will leave a huge personality and batsmanship hole, can bring some sanity to the DRS debate.
Because while he’s around it doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere.
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