The crowd shuffled to their seats at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium carrying boxes of French fries and biryani and soft drinks, with seemingly very little anxiety. West Indies had just made 405. But nobody seemed particularly consumed by the equation for India. The spectators had spent the first innings watching runs come easily and now, after the break, there was Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill to watch, and then Virat Kohli.
By now, the ground was at its fullest too. Many fans had strategically avoided the extreme heat of the afternoon when West Indies were batting and made their way in droves by the time the second innings had rolled along.
"Shub-man, Shub-man" came first, surprisingly, before "Ro-hit, Ro-hit" took over. One look around the stands and that order seemed even stranger. Rohit and Kohli were everywhere, their names printed across the backs of blue shirts. Gill shirts were much harder to find.
The DJ usually has some responsibility for lifting the tempo in the stands. For the first part of this chase, he wasn't needed. Rohit's first boundary produced the kind of noise West Indies had already encountered on this tour. In Thiruvananthapuram, one member of their support staff had told Cricinfo that the sound when Rohit struck his first four had been deafening. Guwahati wasn't much different. And there would be more.
Rohit pulled and flicked. Gill drove and cut. Neither seemed to need to hit the ball particularly hard for it to travel. Gill knew where the gaps were. When the quicks angled the short ball into him, he sometimes made room in advance and sent it through the off side. His placement was almost geometrical in its precision. Often, a fielder would make one instinctive movement towards the ball before stopping, the brain catching up with what the body already knew. There was no point. It was already past him. With Rohit most of them went over the infield.
At first, every boundary was greeted for what it meant to the chase. Four fewer from 406. Six fewer. Another little piece removed from an enormous target.
India were 33 without loss after five overs. Five overs later, they were 92 without loss. Rohit had already reached fifty. By the end of the 17th, they had 169, with both openers in the 80s. After 20, it was 188. The big overs kept coming and the required rate kept shrinking. At some point, India losing became an impossibility and the boundaries went from feeling like relief to becoming the norm.
Phones came out - and stayed out - because spectators began recording deliveries on the assumption that something worth taking home was about to happen. Others made video calls and pointed their screens towards the field, giving friends elsewhere a live glimpse of what they were missing.
Soon, even two dot balls together bored them, and there was something ridiculous about that. India were chasing 406 and their supporters had been given such an overdose of clean hitting that a couple of deliveries without a boundary could feel like deprivation.
A four that might have stood out on another night could be forgotten within minutes because another one just as good had arrived. Barsapara means "rainy neighbourhood" in Assamese, and even though was no drizzle to look out for on Wednesday night, those in the stands still spent much of it looking upwards, following cricket balls instead.
One of them, off Rohit's bat, crashed into an advertising board between the first and second tiers and sent spectators scrambling to find the ball. For a few moments, nobody wanted to give it back. There was no certainty that those fans would get another chance to watch Rohit play for India in Guwahati - here was something the man himself had sent them.
The umpires were less sentimental. They wanted the ball returned. Gill waited in the middle too, watching to make sure the same one came back rather than a replacement being sent in. Eventually, it was surrendered and play resumed. The hole Rohit had punched into the advertising board remained all evening.
Gill got to his century first. The shot that took him there initially looked almost too gentle for the occasion. He flicked the ball between deep square-leg and deep midwicket and it looked destined to bring him one, two at most. Instead, it kept gathering pace. Two West Indies fielders converged, collided, and the ball beat them both. He took his helmet off and raised the bat. The celebration was measured. India still had plenty of runs to get, at least so the scoreboard said.
After 25 overs, India were 250 without loss. They had begun needing 406 and now required 156 from 150 balls. A target that should have occupied everyone's thoughts had been reduced to an equation that barely demanded attention.
And so the supporters found something else to care about, since Rohit was on 99. Vitel Lawes bowled and Rohit defended. A dot on the scoreboard, and thousands waited. Then Gill got the strike and began finding boundaries himself, which on almost any other night would have been reason enough to celebrate. Here, it merely prolonged the wait for Rohit and the fans.
When the strike finally came back, Rohit nudged the single and the ground released everything it had been holding. Rohit hopped to the other end and drove his right fist upwards. Gill stood there beaming at him. Rohit looked up. Many had arrived wearing Rohit's name across their backs. Now they had watched him reach three figures in front of them.
A few minutes later, Jayden Seales trapped Rohit lbw for 101 off his 75th delivery, and appeared to mimic Rohit's little hop in celebration. Then everyone rose together. Rohit walked towards the dressing room after an opening stand of 255. Coming towards him was Kohli. They met halfway and exchanged a dap, one of India's great ODI batters leaving the stage to another.
West Indies' reward for finally getting Rohit lasted about two or three minutes, because Kohli went six, four, four. After the six, Seales smiled. It was a wry one - one that seemed to fit the evening better than anger could have. West Indies had broken the partnership and India's response had been to send out Kohli, who had immediately started finding the boundary too.
Even dismissing him for a 19-ball 29 required something exceptional. Sherfane Rutherford caught a ramp near the rope at deep third, released it before his momentum carried him over, stepped back inside and completed the catch. Kohli looked back to check whether Rutherford had actually managed it. He had. Kohli knew he was out and walked.
The crowd stood and applauded him. They acknowledged Rutherford's brilliance too. Even in isolation, Kohli's innings was worth enjoying.
At the time, India were 320 for 2 and still needed 86. Ordinarily, there was enough there for a match. Nobody around Barsapara seemed to be treating it like one. Almost 18 overs were still left, after all.
That may have been the strangest part of the evening. A target of 406 is supposed to create its own pressure. Runs made first and runs chased later are not quite the same currency because the scoreboard keeps reminding the chasing side what failure would look like. A quiet passage can make an equation grow very quickly. But in that opening partnership and the Kohli cameo that followed, everyone had lost whatever fear they might have had.
Once that happened, the energy around the ground began to change. Now people were sitting around talking. Some posed for photographs. Phones that had spent the first half of the chase pointed towards the field were being turned around for selfies. For the first time all evening, the emcee had to work for their attention.
And soon after, people began to leave. Victory had become certain. Navigating the roads home - Guwahati is notorious for its traffic - was more uncertain. A father walked down the steps with his daughter in his arms, the mother alongside him, and the cricket carried on behind them.
The departures began as a trickle. One family here, another group there, all keeping their eyes on the field as they took their first steps down. After all, what if there was one more shot worth staying for?
West Indies, for their part, hadn't stopped trying. Their fielders still sprinted when there was a ball they could save. But the urgency of the earlier overs had gone. Shai Hope, the visiting captain, had initially spent much of his time in conversation with his young spinners and fielders. Later, he and Roston Chase stood together chatting, smiles occasionally appearing on their faces.
Gill kept batting, and slowly the crowd found something else worth waiting for: the double-hundred. For a while, he was stuck on 182 while Ruturaj Gaikwad faced an entire over. There was no booing for Gaikwad. There was no pressure. All they needed was for Gill to get a few balls.
The violence of Gill's strike rate was at odds with the way he had made his runs. He would finish with 26 fours and eight sixes, scoring at 167.66, yet there had been remarkably little muscle in his batting. Shots down the V seemed to require only the presentation of the bat face.
Gill reached 192. Then 194. And at 198, spectators who had spent the previous half-hour chatting were suddenly staring at the middle again. The match had stopped providing suspense - the possibility of a double-century was exciting. Gill reached 199, but Gaikwad had to face the final two deliveries of the over.
Off the first ball of the next over, Gaikwad drove to long-on and took a single, leaving thousands celebrating a run because it had been scored by the wrong batter. Gill was back on strike. Lawes was the bowler, and Gill pushed the ball to long-on and ran through.
Two-hundred! Fireworks burst around the ground and jets of flame shot upwards. Gill leapt and punched the air, then removed his helmet, placed it on top of his raised bat and held both arms aloft. There was plenty of noise, but it was different from the frenzy around Rohit's or Gill's own centuries earlier in the evening. This felt more like recognition, thousands seemingly aware at once that they had just watched something they were unlikely to see often.
Gill had taken 117 balls to get there, nine fewer than Ishan Kishan's previous ODI record. It was his second double-century in the format and only the second made in an ODI chase, after Glenn Maxwell's against Afghanistan at the 2023 World Cup.
Then that moment passed too. Gill, who has often struggled with cramps and neck issues on sultry days, finally went down for treatment.
By then, the trickle towards the exits had become a noticeable stream. After all, Thursday was beginning to intrude on Wednesday. There was work in the morning, school for some and long drives across Guwahati and beyond.
There are limits to how long a crowd can keep celebrating. Barsapara had been asked to react to something almost constantly. By now, people looked exhausted by the abundance.
Gill and Gaikwad mostly walked their singles. India reached 400 with seven overs remaining. With six to win, the children who remained began clapping. They moved towards the edge of the stands. Some climbed onto chairs and craned their necks to see over the people taller than them. While the adults worried about the practicalities, the kids still wanted to see the last run. Ideally a six.
Gill flicked Chase for four and made it two to win. Then he pushed a low full toss towards long-on and walked through for the single. As Gill reached the non-striker's end to level the scores, he began taking off his gloves, and then his helmet. Gaikwad scored the winning run from the next ball.
The pyrotechnics went up once more around the ACA Stadium and the lights at the ground glittered saffron, white and green. There would be other games here, but there wouldn't be another Wednesday night quite like this one.