If you had closed your eyes just before Murali Vijay was dismissed by Shane Shillingford, you would have thought one of the Indian batsmen had just smashed a six, such was the noise that was made when the home team's second wicket fell down.
Sachin Tendulkar, the man that the crowd at the Eden Gardens had come to watch, was finally walking onto the field -- with his pads on -- after six hours and 39 minutes of playing time.
Tendulkar was welcomed to the crease by an attacking field from Darren Sammy, with slip, leg slip, forward short leg and silly point all with their hands outstretched hoping to be the one to hold onto the prized catch of the Little Master.
The West Indies also had Shillingford with his tail pointing north after sending the openers - Shikhar Dhawan and Vijay - back to the pavilion.
Tendulkar, as is his wont, took his time, only getting off the mark in his sixth delivery, off Tino Best, dropping a short delivery down to point for a single.
Then came the boundaries that everyone wanted, as Tendulkar guided a couple of them past midwicket off in-the-zone Shillingford.
The first was a drive with the turn through midwicket, which had the crowd on their feet. A couple of deliveries later, Tendulkar did the same again as another flick past midwicket went racing to the boundary.
Then Tendulkar, perhaps to his own detriment, went into a bit of a shell, playing out nine straight dot balls off Shillingford, which gave the off-spinner the confidence to keep attacking the great man.
The pressure on Tendulkar increased when Cheteshwar Pujara threw his wicket away at the other end off Sheldon Cottrell, and that shell of Tendulkar just grew bigger.
Shillingford kept pressing and probing the Indian icon, and finally got his reward, albeit in rather dodgy circumstances.
Tendulkar failed to pick a Doosra from the spinner, with the ball missing his defences and striking him on his back pad. Nigel Llong took some time before raising his finger for lbw, cueing the I-don't-believe-it gasps around the ground.
Replays showed the ball striking Tendulkar's right thigh pad, rather than the pads below and the ball would have clearly gone well above the wickets - surely Llong should have been 100 percent sure, and then some, before giving out the Little Master in his 199th and penultimate Test?
Had India been open to the Decision Review System (DRS), Tendulkar - one of the main men against the DRS -- would have appealed and surely would have seen the decision overturned.
But, it was not to be and a fairy tale first innings will have to wait, rather unfortunately, as the maximum number of innings that anyone will ever now witness from one of the sport's greatest ever players, was whittled down to three.
