THE crowd were whipped up into a frenzy:
a host of raucous Indians screaming for their heroes, howling with glee at every boundary, dancing and chanting to the sweet thwack of every straight drive. For one stoic batsman, it was simply another day on the pedestal.
For Dougie Brown, though, it all seemed very strange on December 11, 1997, the only occasion Sachin Tendulkar would play against a Scot in his senior competitive career. Brown was playing for England at the time, of course, making his one-day international debut in a fiery cauldron in Sharjah. Picked to open the bowling, Brown remembers the struggle to dislodge him.
"It was hysterical and incredibly noisy," the former Warwickshire and Scotland bowler recalled. "He got 91 then ran down the wicket and got stumped by Alex Stewart at a really pivotal moment. We needed a wicket, Tendulkar missed one and it was probably the only false shot he played in the whole game."
Tendulkar's long Test career is drawing to a close this week with his final match against the West Indies, nearly a quarter of a century after its teenage dawn. It is a sojourn at the crease best defined by its incomparable numbers: the 200 Tests, the average of 53.7, the 15,847 runs, the 51 centuries to go with 49 in the one-day game.
Most impressively, it has been a vigil with only a twilight dip in form, something which could not be said of his greatest rival, Brian Lara, now long retired. Theirs were different tasks, though, and required a different riposte: Tendulkar carrying the weight of a nation's expectations; Lara his own team through its slow decline.
Brown followed his debut against India with a match against Lara's West Indies two days later. This time, he fared better, capturing the Trinidadian for a second-ball duck. "I'd had breakfast with Brian in the morning," said Brown. "He was joining us again [at Warwickshire] that summer so I knew him pretty well. First ball, he played and missed. Second, it swung back and he got planted lbw. They were both at the top of their game at that time."
His road was to converge with Tendulkar's again not long after. Following his impressive displays in Sharjah, the Scot was invited to represent the Rest of the World against an all-star Indian XI that winter. The friendly match was organised by Sri Sathya Sai Baba, a holy man - revered by Tendulkar - who believed he was the reincarnation of Sai Barba of Shirdi, a late 19th-century Indian guru, himself now regarded as a saint.
The match was hastily arranged for the Hill View Stadium in Puttaparthi; before a rapturous audience and with statues of Buddha, Jesus and a host of other gods gazing down from the hillside, it was an extraordinary, wild affair. Except in one inevitable regard: Tendulkar scored a century.
"It was a bizarre experience," admitted Brown. "I ended up spending a lot of time with [Rahul] Dravid and Tendulkar over the course of four days. It was quite special. There were 40,000 people making the noise of 100,000 . . . just ridiculous. Tendulkar's 100 kept them all pretty happy."
The Indian batsman's path has crossed briefly with that of the Saltire on a smattering of other occasions, all in friendly conditions. In 1990, India played a warm-up at Titwood, before their tour of England. Tendulkar faced 26 balls and scored 10 runs to secure victory against a Scotland side bolstered by the likes of Gordon Greenidge - a regular spike on the great West Indies wrecking ball of the 70s and 80s, and former Wisden cricketer of the year - and Omar Henry, who was still a couple of years away from becoming the first black man to play for South Africa, at the age of 40.
Two years earlier, Tendulkar had been part of a Star of India side which played against a young Scotland team at Broughty Ferry; the attack was led by a boyish Brown. "There were a lot of very good players playing in that game," he recalled. "Guys who went on to play international cricket, but he was the one everyone was talking about being the next best thing."
He was 15 at the time, in normal sporting terms just a boy. But typical standards were not destined to apply to this teenager. Even at that early age, he was just a year away from the Indian Test team, where he would be entrenched for the next 24 years.
The last couple of them have been painful; his has been a lingering goodbye. The endless quest for the 100th century; anticlimactically achieved against a toothless Bangladesh attack. Watching as once-stalwart companions Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, retired or were dropped, still the little grey-haired master trudged on, not so much raging against the dying of the light as hunched at the crease, squinting for a last glimpse.
The vacuum when his wicket fell in recent times was worse than silent, an inverted hush that sucked the life out of the stadium, before spectators, robbed of another magical spell with their hero, started shuffling toward the concessions stands. Tendulkar had become the whole show, perhaps to the detriment of the rest of the team.
"Opposing teams used to feel that Sachin's dismissal meant they could win the game," Wasim Akram, the terrifying Pakistan swing bowler, once said. "Today, I feel that the Indian players, too, feel that way."
While a retirement two or three years ago might have made for a more triumphant exit, there remains the strong sense that this, now, is the perfect moment, just as the young, fearless generation - the dashing Virat Kohli, the moustachioed Shikhar Dhawan, the grim, remorseless Che Pujara - have finally wrestled the torch out of his hands. With the benefit of hindsight, we will realise that these last few innings have been precious.
Bob Dylan is in Glasgow next week. But the thousands who will fill the Clyde Auditorium are not going to watch an old man croak out hazy shadows of the anthems that made him an icon. They go simply to be in his unique presence. So it has been with Tendulkar's last years.
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