India on the foothill of Mt Windies

The experts have issued their pronouncements. Play it session by session, they said, to the Indians, break up that mammoth score into bite-sized targets. Keep the bowling tight, they said to the West Indians, the devil in the track may have dozed off but you can count on batsmen making mistakes.

This is not a game of chess, emotion is as pertinent as technique and gameplan. They discern that here in Sabina Park, this sparse but keen working day gathering. The music has mellowed, the DJ at the Red Stripe Mound has curbed his interventions, and the sledging has ceased. The skies are darkening but they have not circumscribed the possibilities here. It’s a test of character, they reckon, and oohs and aahs ring clear through the fierce mid-afternoon breeze.

To be sure the plot has gone somewhat awry. It started well enough for the hosts. Yesterday evening, the man of the day — Merv Dillon, beaming after his career-best five-wicket haul — said his mates figured that a target anything in excess of 400 would be enough. This morning, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who’s through the series had the visitors scratching their heads for a gameplan to crack his defences, retreated early, caught and bowled by Zaheer Khan. But Pedro Collins lingered around long enough to carry his team past the 400 mark.

But 408 for victory it was, and the normally defensive Shiv Sundar Das came out looking positive. It could be the aggressiveness teammates like Tendulkar have been trying to instill in him in one table tennis game after another. It could be an acknowledgement of the mindgame in progress. So off he went, after a watchful Dillon over, hitting him for consecutive boundaries down the ground. At the other end Wasim Jaffer aimed for the same tempo. Till the scoreboard read 19 and he capitulated to Barbadian Collins — Tendulkar’s nemesis for much of the tour — only to be followed by Das 10 runs later, a most unfortunate victim of umpire Tiffin’s lbw declaration.

Rahul Dravid had come in at the fall of the first wicket, as he normally does, reverting from his first innings sprint to the middle to his usual trudge. But his pace was uncharacteristic, his early minutes glittering with a whirl of boundaries, his wicket gifted 26 runs and 36 balls later to Adam Sanford.

One big innings, one big innings is all it will take, that’s the refrain among Indian supporters scattered around this ground — some turned out in the clothes they wore in Kolkata that March day when India braved the ignominy of a follow-on and registered an audacious win, others carrying the tricolour in the pre-rain cool. It will take more than that. It will take an emphatic assertion of a collective will to win.

Sachin Tendulkar’s been giving proof of his greatness, standing majestically to cut it past point one minute, going down on his knees to guide the red cherry to the cover fence the next, stepping back and cutting it lyrically soon after. This is a big game for him. It has nothing to do with the dashed hopes of a Brian Lara-Tendulkar clash this summer. Nothing too to do with bettering Don Bradman’s once-bridged record. This is Tendulkar’s chance to silence twitters once and for all that he has never won India a Test. Chances like these don’t come by every summer.

For the Little Master. For an Indian team abroad trying to stop the defeatist momentum of history.