Shortly after 1.30pm at the Centre of Excellence (CoE) on the outskirts of Bengaluru, as the policemen patrolling Ground 1 broke for lunch, fans clambered onto boundary walls and the tops of container trucks parked next to the warehouses across the road.
Virat Kohli was walking out to bat in the first over of Delhi's 299-run chase against Andhra.
At Ground 3, a match-simulation session had just wrapped up. A small group of India Under-19 players, barely into their meal, rushed out the moment they spotted Kohli striding towards the middle.
An idyllic winter afternoon was jolting to life. Nothing else seemed to matter. Delhi's target was all everyone had their eyes on, not for the promise of an exciting chase but the chance it gave Kohli to score a century.
The last time Kohli played in the Vijay Hazare Trophy was back in February 2010. He'd had a full Test career between that appearance and this one. There was bedlam in Delhi when he played one Ranji Trophy game earlier this year. But with no fans allowed at the CoE, this was a quieter affair.
It took Kohli three balls before he stepped out and walloped Nitish Kumar Reddy inside-out over cover. Off his fifth and sixth deliveries, he threaded the gap between cover and point for two more boundaries. The fans by now had found their voice. The hooting became so frenzied that a few policemen sprinted back to duty, abandoning half-eaten plates in the lunchroom.
Kohli was up and running, carrying on from where he had left off in the ODI series against South Africa earlier in the month, when he made two centuries and a half-century in a Player-of-the-Series-winning performance.
The shot that lit up the afternoon came in the third over, again off Reddy. Wary of pitching too full, he went hard length, half-expecting Kohli to premeditate. This time, Kohli stood tall, rose onto his toes and punched him on the up over extra cover, and the ball sailed over the ropes. Kohli held the pose, following ball's arc, and the cameras whirred away. Wild cheering came from the Delhi dugout, with Rishabh Pant leading the charge.
Kohli raced to 25 off 13 balls, and was in the mood to press on. With Priyansh Arya racing to a 31-ball half-century, the chase became an exhibition of clean striking at both ends. Where Kohli was all aesthetics, Arya was full of brute force, stepping out to slap length balls and hitting short-arm jabs and flat-bat pulls over midwicket.
Kohli was taking spin on from the start, not just milking the singles but looking to put the spinners off their lengths and bringing out the sweep early his innings. It isn't a shot he plays often. On 32, he was put down at mid-on.
He got to his half-century off 39 balls, bringing it up with a slap over point. By this time Andhra's bowlers seemed to be going through the motions; Kohli and Arya put on 113 in just 11.5 overs.
Amid the whirlwind of boundaries, the basics of a trademark Kohli knock were still in full display: hard running, quick running, the desire to pinch twos at the smallest inkling of a chance, and mind games to manipulate the bowlers' lengths. He often walked into his strokes to meet the ball early, seemingly to negate movement.
As the afternoon progressed, the frenzy around Kohli's shots simmered a little. But every time those within the CoE compound switched off, expecting nothing more than a stroll to the finish, there came a stroke that left you wondering what might have brought about this new-found tempo that Kohli has unlocked, which he says he hadn't been able to replicate for a while. Could it just be his hunger to prove a point as he sets his sights on the 2027 ODI World Cup?
A thump over mid-off that cleared the ropes took him into the 80s, and a gun-barrel straight hit off a Nitish half-volley, which left the bowler hurrying to get out of the way, into the 90s. When he walked down to flat-bat him next ball to the boundary to get within one hit of a century, everyone readied their cameras.
Those looking to find the perfect vantage point didn't have any time. Kohli beat them to his century with a wristy whip down the ground, all bottom-handed power, followed by a glance back to acknowledge the applause of his mates.
It felt almost unfair that TV audiences were denied a chance to tuck into this feast. At the ground, everyone was sated. The ground staff and policemen soaked it all, filling their phones with shaky footage, and were treated to a wave from the man himself.
Far from the centre of the city that's made Kohli its own, far from the Chinnaswamy, this gentle winter afternoon crackled with a familiar electricity.