A quick send-off

Tendulkar's Eden parade,1st Test over in three days Shami's 5/47 9/118 register innings win.

It was time for tea. As soon as the players made their way to the dressing room,some fifty-odd volunteers sprang to life and took their positions all along the Eden Gardens boundary. Each of them wore Sachin Tendulkar masks and carried in their hands helium balloons in national colours. The biggest tri-colour bunch,held by a suited-up Sourav Ganguly,had a cardboard cut-out of Tendulkar tied at the bottom.

Tendulkar crossed the ropes and shook his friend,ally and former captains hands. The plan was a simple one. Indias greatest one-day opening pair would release the first set,followed by the masked volunteers. Tendulkar did as told and threw it skywards,bidding his picture-frame goodbye. The crowds went up,but the balloons didnt. The weight of the cardboard was too much for the inert balloons to take flight. It was a symbolic moment. One that truly summed up the three days of this Test.

Burdened by the heft of making this match into a Sachin Special as it was called here,the first Test at the Eden Gardens never really took off. Kolkatas cricket fans and administrators had hoped to give a great farewell to the man playing his 199th game,overlooking the fact that a Test match had to be played.

They bought balloons,made wax statues and wore masks,hoping Tendulkar would truly make it special with his bat. He ended up fielding for the better part of two days,bowling five overs and batting for a few minutes. The match ended before the big weekend could begin.

Yet,Tendulkar was given a fitting farewell. From his team.

What greater tribute could MS Dhoni and his side have possibly given this man,whose career was tied down by the pressures of performing,than to ask him to not perform at all?

Tendulkar wasnt even required to bat for a second time. Nor were India. They had beaten the West Indies by an innings and 51 runs.

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Despite having played for India since the 80s,Tendulkar had never been part of a side that had won five Test matches in a row. But now he was,the fifth coming against a side that had won their last six matches.

Streak snapped

Make no mistake,Darren Sammys West Indies were no pushovers. They had not lost,let alone drawn,a match in the last 16 months. But that streak was snapped by,well,two Test debutants. The day began with one of them,Rohit Sharma.

Unbeaten overnight on 127,Rohit had ensured that India had fought back and even gained a lead of 127 runs after being reduced to 83/5 on Day Two. This,while batting alongside a number eight batsman,Ravichandran Ashwin,who brought up his second Test hundred on Friday. His second against the West Indies. His second when the fans had flocked to watch a Tendulkar moment remember Mumbai 2011?.

Rohit stretched his score by exactly 50 runs in the morning before shouldering arms to a Veerasammy Permaul ball. He was gone for 177. Soon Ashwin was out,bowled around his legs by Shane Shillingford,for 124. At the stroke of lunch,India were wrapped up for 453,having ballooned their first innings lead to 219 runs.

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All the way until tea,the visitors looked good to wipe this deficit clean. But in this middle session,the ball was still new. And with the new ball,Mohammed Shami,the other debutant,was not half as terrifying as he was with the old.

In just his first over,Shami was smacked for two boundaries by Chris Gayle. The West Indies opener pushed the first one through the cordon and looked far more convincing with his second boundary,a punch down the ground past long-off.

He took confidence from it,for when Shami returned for his second over,Gayle punished another length ball through covers for four. Dhoni let Shami have one more bite at the new cherry,only for Gayle to smoke two more through the covers for boundaries.

Unlike in the first innings,Gayle looked to play in the V. He had learned from his mistakes,but not from his opening partners. Quite like Kieran Powell in the first innings,Gayle went after the first short ball hurled at him and perished. This when he had already thumped Bhuvneshwar Kumar for two fours in the same over.

Older ball works

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When Powell departed just before tea,the West Indies,101/2,looked good. But the ball didnt. Thirty one overs old,it was old enough to reverse.

Sensing that Marlon Samuels,still new to the crease,would be looking to play for time,Dhoni reintroduced his weapon,Shami. The three balls that Samuels faced went something like this.

The first reversed in from middle,clipped his thigh guard and raced away for four byes. The second reversed in from middle,clipped Samuels inside edge and ran away for four more. The third reversed in from middle,hit nothing but his pads in line with leg and Samuels was gone for four runs.

Tea gave Shami enough time to correct his line. Instead of aiming for middle and swerving it towards leg,Shami drifted it in from off stump. Only one man got bat on ball,Denesh Ramdin. He was caught bat-pad at short-leg.

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The rest,Sammy,Shane Shillingford and Sheldon Cottrell,hit nothing but fresh Kolkata air.