Ahmedabad, second Test, day 3
Thursday, December 13, 2001

And still they came. Decrepit and toddler, man and woman, sari and salwar kameez, on skipping foot or dusty scooter. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand people swarming to the Sardar Patel stadium - as surely as the sun rises baking every morning.

First the white east stand filled then, like an arm slowly emerging from a shirt, the rest of the ground became human. One million rupees fell into the pockets of the Gujarat cricket association, and a nation fell into the pocket of Sachin Tendulkar. Again.

Beautiful Jain and Hindu temples and mosques decorate Ahmedabad, gloriously emerging from behind unexpected corners. Tendulkar is not unexpected: expectation sits on his shoulder like a hump - crippling to most but he manages. He walks free and bats free because he can disregard that expectation.

He can disregard everything except what is happening on a 22-yard stretch of earth in front of him. At lunchtime news emerged of a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in Delhi, by suspected Kashmiri seperatists. At least five people were reported to have been killed and there were early rumours that this could affect the England tour. But, as in 1999, when Tendulkar scored a century in the World Cup the day after flying back from his father's funeral in Mumbai, once the game starts, only one thing matters.

And when the umpires walked back after lunch it was a different game. Tendulkar, who had been so circumspect before lunch - retracting his claws so much that England could dare to think they had tamed him - unleashed. Perfectly good balls from Matthew Hoggard on off-stump were flicked through the on-side, beating the lone fielder patrolling that side of the wicket. Poor Richard Dawson didn't have a prayer. Tendulkar had dined on 37, Laxman on 10. When Tendulkar reached his hundred, 90 minutes into the afternoon session, Laxman had made just 16 more.

The noise when Tendulkar is batting batters the eardrums. How does he shut it out? Or the volts that shoot through the crowd the moment the second wicket falls and he walks out, and increase with every Sachinesque milestone. On 94 the crowd were feverish - he likes to get to his hundred with a six. On 96 they were in ecstasy. It was just a matter of waiting - one, two balls - hook.

Tanya Aldred, our assistant editor, is covering the whole tour for Wisden.com.

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