Freddie Flintoff loves his music and he loves singing. More specifically, he loves his rock ‘n’ roll and is not averse to a burst of Elvis Presley’s ‘Suspicious Minds’.

So it was no surprise to hear that music played a part in England’s victory in Mumbai. Flintoff was asked by an Indian reporter to explain the significance of Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’. Flintoff could barely keep a straight face. “It’s just a song that the boys like,” he demurred.

Flintoff knew the real connection but it would have been impolite to explain that the song’s title is an unintended reference to, er, the after-effects of eating spicy food. The song became England’s tour anthem during the pre-Christmas trip to Pakistan.

I’m told that the atmosphere in the England dressing room during the lunch interval on the final day was akin to a rugby match. With ‘Ring of Fire’ blaring out full blast, the players whipped themselves up into a hand-clapping, feet-stomping frenzy.

No wonder ‘The Wall’ collapsed so soon after lunch.

Duncan Fletcher’s public utterances are few and far between and rarely memorable. But there is usually a waspish sting in the tail.

Last night he was being lightly grilled about England’s dilatory run rate as they attempted to set India a target. Having explained how hard it was for the batsmen, the coach said: “In Pakistan we were told we scoring too quickly and that we needed to be more patient. Now we’re scoring too slowly. It’s pretty hard to please you people.”

Not hard, Duncan, impossible.

Rivalling the British press in the fickleness stakes is the Wankhede crowd. Not 48 hours since Sachin Tendulkar was lampooned by his own people, he was welcomed shamelessly back yesterday into the bosom of his home city.

When he was caught behind off Jimmy Anderson on Sunday afternoon, he was booed all the way back to the dressing room. Yesterday he was given the full we-are-not-worthy treatment after running out Owais Shah.

As he strolled back his fielding station on the boundary, supporters swarmed to the front of the stand and clammered at the perimeter fence.

Sachin raised a dignified hand in acknowledgement. Personally, I might have favoured a different gesture.

After the hoo-ha about the booing of Sachin Tendulkar, the Wankhede crowd again came under scrutiny yesterday.

Midway through the afternoon, Farokh Engineer, the India and Lancashire wicket-keeper from the 60s and 70s, took it upon himself to make an announcement to the assembled media.

I figured he was about to indulge in a spot of self-promotion, perhaps for a charitable foundation or some such.

No, he was issuing an apology on behalf of the people of Mumbai, no less, for the verbal abuse meted out by the crowd to Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard.

This was an unconventional strategy for the simple reason that no one had much of a clue what he was talking about. I was vaguely aware, from minor anecdotal evidence, that young, brash Bombayites had been dishing out a few low-grade sledges to Flintoff. But it didn’t sound like anything Fred wouldn’t have heard before or indeed anything that the more raucous English crowds dish out themselves to opposition players.

Engineer explained that he had been out for dinner with Ian Botham “and some of the boys” the night before. And in the course of the evening’s revelry this had been brought to his attention.

Engineer’s actions would not happen in England. Most ground authorities will deny claims of disorder or rowdiness unless absolutely forced to fess up.

So you could say his was a noble gesture. You could also say that his comments simply highlighted the inadequacies of a stadium whose woeful public facilities are not commensurate with Mumbai’s status either as a major cricketing centre or as one of the flashest, brashest and wealthiest cities in the world.

Cricketers are not known for their attention to detail. That particular discipline is left to pedants like us.

So it was something of a surprise when S Sreesanth decided he wanted a second bite at the cherry of the end-of-day media conference. Having taken 4 for 70, he was the designated Indian player to face the hacks and he said all the right things in a gentle inquisition that lasted all of ten minutes or so.

But after leaving his seat and made for the exit, he promptly returned to the microphone-laden table. “I want to make an announcement,” he said. Comments like that lead to wild and excitable speculation. Journalists could see their careers flashing before their eyes. Is this the big one?

“I would like everyone to know that my name is Sreesanth. That’s S-R-E-E-S-A-N-T-H. Thank you.”

You what? We don’t do jokes ten minutes before deadline. Was it a joke? Not a very funny one clearly. Apparently, there had been a misspelling of Mr Sreesanth’s name (there was a U instead of an A, if you must know). And he’s not amused. But the culprits have been apprehended and they will be facing him and Munaf Patel in the nets tomorrow.

This was all too much for members of Britain’s popular press for whom accuracy is, of course, paramount. What they couldn’t understand is why he was known by only one name, Sreesanth. “Is it Sri Sreesanth?” one asked. It was explained that his first name is very long and it does not shorten to Sri. “But we’ve got to call him something,” was the response.

I suggested that if Brazilian footballers could be known by a single name then perhaps Indian fast bowlers could be too. Maybe that’s all part of the BCCI’s deal with Nike.

If you’re a bat geek (that’s as in willow rather than Bruce Wayne) you might know that Kookaburra’s bat the ‘Beast’ was recently deemed illegal by MCC, the arbiter of cricket’s Laws, because it had a graphite strip down the back of the blade.

Ricky Ponting is the most high-profile user of the ‘Beast’ so he promptly ditched it and has been using one of Kookaburra’s other models in Australia’s Test in Cape Town.

So it was interesting to observe that Owais Shah, England’s sixth debutant in six Tests, used what looked to untrained observers like me the self-same ‘Beast’ while making a fifty in Mumbai before retiring hurt today.

I raised the issue with a colleague who in turn raised it with Angus Fraser, wearer of many hats including member of the ICC’s cricket committee that has jurisdiction over this kind of thing. He was sceptical. He didn’t think ICC had banned it in international cricket. He thought there was a moratorium while Kookaburra batsmen got themselves sorted. To settle the argument, he phoned Dave Richardson, ICC’s cricket manager, who told Fraser that batsmen had been given “a reasonable amount of time” to replace their ‘Beasts’. Shah had come straight to India from an England A tour in West Indies and, it is fair to assume, not expected to play in a Test. So presumably he has not had “reasonable time” to get a new batch of bats in.

But being mischievous, I phoned our man in Cape Town, Ed Craig, and suggested he asked Ponting’s opinion on the matter. I suspected that the Australian captain might be more bothered about going 1-0 up in a three-Test series in South Africa but I was wrong.

Ponting was asked: “Isn’t it ironic that Owais Shah was using the banned bat today making his Test debut after all the fuss made about your bat?”

Ponting replied: “Well, he can’t use it he’ll be suspended. He scored 50 today using that bat, really? Guess what I’m using in Durban then! It was supposed to be banned as of the 12th of this month, which was the last one-day game the other day. That was all the feedback I received from Kookaburra and everybody else.”

Ed continued: “He’s retired hurt at the moment, do reckon he should be allowed back in?” “With a different bat, maybe, yeah,” Ponting laughed.

To paraphrase the old Heineken adverts: only cricket can do this. A Law ought to be definitive, oughtn’t it? Probably. But it’s only a piece of wood and who would begrudge a guy who’s waited the best part of ten years a fifty on Test debut?

Virgin Atlantic do their best to alleviate the fidgety tedium of a long-haul flight with some half-decent movies, some re-heated but generally top-notch comedy and a bunch of music channels to suit most tastes.

But I draw the line at excerpts of Andrew Flintoff’s ghost-written autobiography Being Freddie read aloud being classed as audio entertainment in the same bracket as Johnny Cash or the opera singer Andrea Bocelli.

It sounded a duff idea from the start but in the interests of research, I decided to give Freddie a go. Sadly it’s not Freddie, of course, but an actor (I’m guessing here because I’d never heard of him) with a Mancunian accent so strong that I thought I was being read a bedtime story by Liam Gallagher. Sorry to be pedantic but Flintoff’s not from Manchester and he has rather a charming north Lancashire burr rather than that distinctive, urban twang which gives the listener stuff like “And then ah scored a centureh against Leicestershoh”. And also Murali is pronounced Moorahli, which really wound me up.

I’ve not read the book myself but I’m sure it’s an efficiently adequate work of its kind. But reading it out loud? Come on, it’s hardly Truman Capote, or indeed Fred Trueman come to that.

Still it tells you what Being Freddie is all about: Being Famous.

Fame is all relative of course and I was childishly excited by the sight at the immigration desk of a former English footballer called Mark Dennis. For those of you unfamiliar with his deeds, Dennis played for a number of clubs including Birmingham City and was renowned (which clearly isn’t the right word) for being a ‘proper’ hard man. In today’s entertainment-conscious age where skilful players are revered rather than ravaged, he’d never have stayed on the pitch for long, not that he was any stranger to early baths in those men-were-men days of the early 80s. I’ve seen him before at the cricket, mostly at Hampshire, shirt off, beer in hand so he’s obviously a committed fan.

He looked just like any other punter. And he was travelling Economy. Now that dates him. No footballer of the last decade or so would have to slum it like that. They’d probably hire their own jet.

So goodbye India. I flew away from Delhi today with memories of a fascinating country where cricket has become as big as football in the UK – with all the associated plusses and pitfalls. Where enthusiasm for the game is such that Greg Chappell receiving an email is news. Where the money involved is massive – and likely to get bigger under the current regime. Where there is a gap between the old school of players – the Tendulkars, the Dravids and the Kumbles – and a brasher new generation, some of whom, such as Zaheer Khan, seem to have let success go to their head – just like young Premiership stars.

I’ll also remember the view over the huge bay at Mumbai; Nagpur and its heat and kites and grim English determination; Mohali and the surreal day it all slipped away from Flintoff’s team in an otherworldy din; and Delhi, where friendly locals daubed my face with colours as I made my way to the airport during the festival of colours, Holi.

As it turned out, memories were not all I took away. While making my way home on the No. 35 bus to Clapham Junction, I noticed that I was getting a few queer looks. Which was hardly surprising given that the other passengers were looking at a bedraggled journalist with a head still smeared in yellow and purple paint. Suddenly I remembered. The Holi festival. Best wash my face.

So England lose the Test and with it, most likely, the series. It will be a hell of an effort to win in Mumbai, traditionally a turner.

It was hard to pin down but something seemed lacking in England’s performance. Not effort or skill, but edge. No one really tried to rile the Indians, as England did at times last summer by throwing the ball at Australian batsmen, or very deliberately withholding sympathy when they were hit by bouncers. This time there was hardly any chirrup in the field. There were no sledges. There weren’t even any meaningful glares.

Now some would simply say "thank goodness for that". But, leaving aside the question of the rights and wrongs of trying to bully your opponent, there remains a question. If it was OK to direct it at the Australians, why not India?

There might be nothing in it, but you couldn’t help wondering whether this is because, even at some subconscious level, England are painfully aware of the bad impression they left on some previous trips to the subcontinent.

Over the years we’ve had wisecracks about mothers in law and about local “buffoons” in the press box. We’ve had dodgy prawns. Weakened sides. Hardship bonuses. A nasty incident where a local autograph hunter had his fingers trapped in a kicked-shut door. England’s track record on the subcontinent is not good, with locals left with a picture of closed minds and closed hotel doors. (Incidentally, England are not the only ones: Allan Border’s bored Australians once took to dropping rupees from their hotel balcony to enjoy the ensuing scramble.)

Quite properly England are trying to put things right. They have tried hard to show a more open mind and a more friendly face. In the Vaughan era, not a tour to the subcontinent has gone by without a high-profile trip to a local charity project.

Outside Asia, things have been rather different. Last winter England went to South Africa, didn’t give a damn what people thought of them, and won. In fact they riled the locals in a pretty big way. In Australia it’s no-holds-barred. But, on the face of it, there seems to be a kind of underlying feeling that you can’t get really nasty on the subcontinent.

Now England’s results in Asia were dreadful long before the charm offensive. And Steve Waugh was renowned, even revered, for his interest in India and for his charity work – but it didn’t stop him being an awkward so and so on the field. Perhaps over-aggression is just not the path England think will lead to victory here. And I am not suggesting that to succeed on the field you have to be an ill-mannered berk off it.

But there is a lingering feeling that in trying to avoid the horror stories of the past, England might – and it really is a big “might” – have got a little too nice on the field.

The front page of today’s local section in the Hindustan Times shows a sneering blonde English ladette giving the cameraman the bird.

This follows a minor kerfuffle yesterday when, in one of the few moments of sunshine, English girls in the stands stripped off to bikini tops. “English fans were a major draw for the crowd” , said the piece. And you felt they weren’t talking about the Barmy Army beer guts.

Greeted by whistles and unwanted attention, the visitors soon covered up again. This sort of thing is not done by respectable Indians. Despite that, the piece was still accompanied by a particularly large photo of one of the offenders.

The visitors should have known better. In India kit off is not on. But the incident and the following report seemed a curious parable, an example of modern India’s relations with the west: half drawn in, half repulsed.

There was no such problem today. The crowd was pretty thin, not wanting to stump up a minimum of 200 rupees to get in – the price of a meal in a decent restaurant. And the mizzle deterred even the most determined sunbather.

On another note, after Sri Sreesanth’s break-dancing, we learn of another Indian dancing king. Everyone remembers their first love and Yuvraj Singh’s was ... rollerskating. Inaugurating a roller rink at a local school, Yuvraj is quoted as saying: “I am not new to rollerskating: in fact I have a long relationship with the sport.”

He goes on to reveal that he won a title in his early days. “I was very passionate about skating and used to practise pretty hard. I think I was quite good at it: perhaps better than quite a few senior guys, who would often push me out of jealousy.”

So what happened? Well, according to Yuvraj, his father had no truck with such nonsense and threatened to break his son’s legs if he ever saw him on skates again. “And to save my legs, I had to give up skating and play cricket.”

The Punjab Cricket Association stadium rose from the Mohali swamp 12 years ago. Tidy and well-appointed, it stands as a glass-and-concrete monument to Punjabi affluence.

The Punjab is one of India’s richest states per head of population and it shows. There is a four-storey pavilion with a long room that is all wicker chairs and panelled walls. There are marquees on green lawns flapping in the breeze. There are mementoes in polished hard-wood frames. The cheap seats on the other side of the vast bowl don’t quite compete with that, lacking any sort of roof to shield fans from the sun (or the early-morning drizzle in today’s case). But they still seem more comfortable than most in India.

The ground feels well-heeled in a way Nagpur didn’t. And I presumed that was the reason there are no fewer than 16 floodlight pylons, from which the lights blazed away in today’s gloom. But I am soon disabused.

The Punjab split during the 1947 Partition (hence the building of Chandigarh: Lahore, now in Pakistan, had been the state’s principal city). So Chandigarh is about 150 miles from the border. And the floodlights? Well there are lots of them because they couldn’t just build four or six very high pylons, as at most other grounds. And why was that? Low-flying military aircraft ferrying troops to and from the Pakistani border. Which is a slightly sobering thought as we sit in the murk.

I discover today that the MP for the nearby city of Amritsar is Navjot Singh Sidhu – the Indian opening batsman turned TV commentator, famous for tonking John Emburey for nine sixes in a match. This is an intriguing thought for anyone familiar with Sidhu’s commentary, where he played just as many shots as on the field.

So has he yet told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as he once told a fellow commentator on air: “You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard-boiled egg”. Or that, like the former Indian wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta, the governing Congress Party is “as confused as a child in a topless bar”?

It comes as little surprise that Sidhu represents the conservative and nationalist BJP party. Most cricketers, if they think much about politics at all, seem to tend in that direction. Of course there are currents that cut across that generalisation. Bob Willis added the middle name Dylan by deed poll, in tribute to the 1960s and ‘70s hero of the left, Bob. The Indian slow bowler Palwankar Baloo stood for the socialist Congress Party before the War and was a great champion of the lower castes. Henry Blofeld (17 first-class games for Cambridge University), may, as Matthew Engel once wrote, be a member of the Norfolk branch of the Socialist Workers’ Party in very deep cover.

But the known facts point in a different direction. ‘Lord’ Ted Dexter stood as a Tory candidate in the 1964 election, where he was well beaten in Cardiff South-East by the future Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. The Conservative Prime Minister of the 1960s, Alec Douglas Home, played first-class cricket as a right-arm quickish bowler. Ian Botham was an avid fan of Margaret Thatcher. (And is virtually the only man known to have stopped Tony Blair’s former aide Alastair Campbell in his tracks, memorably telling a bewildered Campbell that “his lot” knew “nothing about the countryside”.) Going further back, the Test players FS Jackson and Lord Harris served in Tory governments. (Though no cricketer I know of approached the views of the 1970s tennis player Buster Mottram, who once said “I hope Enoch Powell will never die, just as his namesake in the Bible never died”, and later had a brief dalliance with the National Front.)

Perhaps it comes from belief in the possibility of self-improvement: “If I can pull myself up to the top, then the rest of you can manage it too.” Perhaps cricketers just don’t like the taxman. And I don’t know how any of them vote, so I may have got it wrong. But I’d put my house on the constituency of English County Cricket returning a man in a blue rosette.

So, goodbye Nagpur, hello Chandigarh. The capital of two northern states (Punjab and Haryana, predominantly Sikh and Hindu respectively), Chandigarh was designed on a grid pattern in the 1950s by Le Corbusier – a French modernist architect who liked concrete. A lot. Given that the city’s parliament building is rumoured to have been inspired by a power station, it’s rather nice really, all wide boulevards, neat flower beds and green leaves. A little like Milton Keynes with red flame trees.

The lushness of it all comes from the great Indus river and its tributaries, formed of run-off from the towering Karakoram to the north, home of K2, the world’s second-highest peak. But despite the unusual greenery, local sources discount the idea that the Test ground is some sort of Indian Headingley, with lots of zippy seam and swing. Haven’t seen the pitch myself, so we’ll see.

Like almost everyone else, I arrived by plane. Jet travel is booming in India, with some operators offering fares as low as ten pounds. But you do miss the old trains: a chat, a chai and chance to read a book. They certainly gave you more to write about. (Though the experience can be romanticised: I once spent 56 hours trapped in a small cabin with a man who ate nothing but the yolks of hard-boiled eggs – with predictable gastric results.)

OK, to finish, a little quiz. No points for guessing India’s biggest tourist attraction*. But the second? Well reportedly it is the ‘Rock Gardens’ here in Chandigarh. They are the strangely beautiful product of one man’s imagination, a surreal fantasy land of rocky chasms, waterfalls and statues, all built from overlooked bits and pieces (a bit like the England one-day team under Adam Hollioake). And it was almost all assembled by one man: Nek Chand, a retired roads inspector, who became a kind of Chandigarh super womble, a Dali of the dustbins. It’s all very impressive. And if one bloke can make the country's second-biggest tourist attraction out of a few bits of rock, some broken plates and a little imagination, I reckon 11 English cricketers can win a Test match in India.

*Taj Mahal at Agra.

The circus has left town. The players are long gone. Most of the commentators, reporters and fans flew out today, leaving me and a handful of others. The tourist bars and restaurants are suddenly empty and silent. Nagpur’s cash bonanza is over.

Still, that’s good news for some. According to the local papers, on February 27th police arrested two local waiters at the Hotel Hardeo. An indignant English tourist had lost his camera and suspected it stolen by someone at the restaurant he had just visited. However, after spending time in police detention, the waiters were released next morning when the tourist woke to find his camera safely in his trouser pocket. It was not revealed whether alcohol was in any way involved.

Those who flew this evening to Chandigarh now have 48 hours or so to get ready for the next helping. Time was when the few tourists who followed England in India – even a few players – could fit in a couple of side trips, tiger-spotting or sightseeing. Many years ago in England, the touring Australians even used to go on country walks together. Now you’re lucky to get time to catch your breath, let alone track a tiger.

That was in the days of Tests separated by about ten days, enough time to breathe a little. It allowed teams to mull over what went before, adapt and plan. To root around. Even find out a bit about the place they’re visiting. Of course it’s understandable that players want to get home to their families, perfectly reasonable that they push for short tours. But there is a natural rhythm to a Test series – and it’s not three days between games.

A friend of mine once came to Calcutta to teach small Indian schoolchildren. He began with some UK geography, asking his eager pupils to name a city in England which he would then point out on a map. ‘London’, came the first reply. ‘Very good’ said Mark, pointing to the Thames estuary. ‘Birmingham’ said another, at which my friend was impressed because these were young children. Then a third stuck his hand up. ‘Taunton’ he called out. Bewildered, Mark said, yes, Taunton was indeed in England, but how on earth had the lad known about it. He should have guessed: ‘Taunton sir – India v England, 1999 World Cup.’

And that appetite for cricket has not changed if Nagpur’s local Sunday paper, The Hitavada, is anything to go by. In a 16-page paper, there are 15 cricket pieces. Remarkably, one of them is headlined ‘Chappell has acknowledged receipt of email’. Over on the front page, the three lead stories are: ‘England Cook up a defiant story’, ‘Keep restraint, Pawar tells Chappell in surprise meet’ and, finally, the tiddling matter of President Bush snubbing a proposed nuclear deal with Pakistan.

I don’t know, but that insatiable demand for fresh news – any news – to fill the cricket quota in newspapers could be one reason that sagas like the Ganguly—Chappell spat seem to be dragged out for ever.

Although his stint as Channel 4 TV’s Analyst ended last summer, Simon Hughes is in India for the Daily Telegraph and continues to come up with sparky technical innovations. The latest is a ‘win-ometer’ on the Telegraph website; Yozzer produces regular updates on which side he reckons the match is swinging towards and the needle on the win-ometer moves accordingly.

The idea is that eventually there will be a betting tie in: you look at the needle to see what Hughes at the ground reckons will happen, eye-up the bookies’ odds on the alternative outcomes and decide whether he’s got it right or not before placing your bet. “Remember”, as Peter Snow, inventor of the original swing-ometer (used on UK election nights) used to say, “ it’s just a bit of fun”. Except, of course, if you take Yozzer’s advice and he gets it wrong.

TV’s loss was today my gain, as in the press box I ended up sat next to the man behind the new gizmo. “So Simon”, I ask while watching England’s batsmen play India’s spinners convincingly, “what exactly is the forward press?” Cue a generous, detailed description, complete with a full re-enactment. So today I had my own personal Analyst.

It is all part of the curious circulation of knowledge in a press box. Obviously scoops are kept to yourself (not that I’ve had any to keep hidden) but most of the rest is general currency, with people expected to chip in their own little bit of expertise.

If you have a Wisden connection, like me, you are expected to be a fount of abstruse statistical knowledge, which can lead to some embarrassment when you have to admit that you don’t actually know when the last time a 26-year-old left-handed Surrey opener scored fifty on the first day of a Headingley Test.

And latterly I’ve fielded a few Blackie queries. Today I was approached by a talented Indian journalist who wanted to know something about the allrounder’s haircut. So that’s what I do in the press box: Scyld Berry and the rest offer wise opinion on English cricket history; I offer advice on Blackie’s hairstyle.

© Getty Images

The bass-heavy tannoy boomed. The crowd drummed on the stands and roared, teaming across the terraces with the Indian tricolour streaming behind them like ensigns on a fleet of speedboats. And from the pavilion emerged … not Sachin but MS Dhoni, the Indian wicketkeeper and pyrotechnic batsman.

For years the English have equated the Indian batting with Dravid, Laxman and above all Tendulkar – all members of the team immortalised by the miracle comeback to beat Australia in 2000-01.

And in India Tendulkar was beyond massive, forced by the sheer pressure of adulation to go out in disguise or perform religious duties at temples in the dead of night. But if you imagine a roar-ometer on which ten is outright pandemonium, Dhoni’s arrival scored about nine and a half today, against Sachin’s eight and a half.

It is a stupid person who underestimates the skill and resolve of a great batsman, or the Indian public’s love for Tendulkar. Perhaps more than anyone else he, as the best in the world, symbolised what modern India was capable of.

But there are small signs that things are changing on the field for Sachin, with only two centuries in two years. And yesterday there was the smallest hint that things could be changing off it too.

I discover today that the young Indian quick bowler Sri Sreesanth is a former breakdancing champion. Now I’m no expert but to the best of my knowledge Sunil Gavaskar was not often seen ‘busting some moves on the dancefloor’. And Javagal Srinath, I’m reliably informed, was not a master of the Michael Jackson-style moonwalk.

Sreesanth is known for his quick feet on and off the pitch © Getty Images

Of course Sreesanth is a one-off but his breakdancing also seems a small sign of how the tide of globalisation is sweeping India, a country that at first glance seems to be becoming increasingly westernised.

On the roads, the old Hindustan Ambassador, the Indian version of the 1960s Morris Oxford, is seldom seen, replaced by nippy numbers from the Far East. In the big cities, the young middle-class guys and girls hang out in western bars, wear the latest western clothes and know eight times more about mobile phones and computers than a dunderhead like me. When Bill Gates recently planned a new so-called Hi-Tech City, he chose India.

Already call centres and IT firms in the UK are outsourcing work here, in search of better educated, better motivated staff. An economic revolution is underway and some day soon we in the west are really going to know about it.

On another note, here’s an update of my Blackie watch of yesterday … Well, he bowled a handful of overs that looked pretty tight from where I was sitting. OK, his first act in the field was to let an on-drive through his long barrier and whistle away for four. But then the ball bobbled didn’t it. And the sun was in his eyes. And …

For me a sleepy but significant day’s cricket was enlivened by the Test debut of Ian Blackwell. You see Blackie and I first met over a french fry fight at an eighth birthday party in McDonalds and later went to school together at Brookfield Community School in Chesterfield, a red-brick and pint-of-bitter town in northern England.

Ian Blackwell: a proper local hero © Getty Images

Blackie was a proper local hero. He is still believed to hold the record for the most number of lost balls in a local league game. And although a few years back he moved to Somerset, he still turns out for Chesterfield when he’s not got a county game. He could hit the ball into the stratosphere and was fun to watch. Occasionally we would bump into each other down the ‘Brampton Mile’ (one mile, 24 pubs, not to be tackled in a single evening). When he made his one-day debut for England I wrote a quick postcard and got a nice note back.

When I hear people say that he’s doesn’t spin the ball much, I say to myself indignantly, well, he turned it enough to make me look daft in the nets. Overweight? Rubbish. The lad’s just big boned. Totally irrational but, well, that irrational part is an important part of the appeal of cricket.

Some people think cricket can be enjoyed purely as an art form. Asked who they support, they say “I’m a supporter of cricket.” But if you don’t care who wins, then something important is surely lost, reducing the game to a series of moves, like non-contact martial arts or ballet. And, far as my irrational favouritism stretches, even I’m prepared to admit Blackie would make a hopeless ballet dancer.

India has many many fine towns and cities but Nagpur is not one of them. A nondescript industrial sprawl 800 kilometres east of the coast at Mumbai, it's bang in the middle of the country but very far from the nation’s heart. The town is unremarkable, largely unloved and famous in cricketing circles for having produced the odd outrageous greentop. It is, in fact, the Derby of India. Which, a cynic would tell you, is exactly why Jagmohan Dalmiya chose it for the First Test – revenge for all those years of English slights, perceived and real.

Tonight at 9.30pm, on the last possible flight, the final remnants of the Test circus touched down in the dark: the Sunday-newspaper and magazine men, with less pressing deadlines than the rest; Owais Shah fresh (if that’s the right word) from a West Indies-to-India epic to bolster England's depleted batting; and the last footsoldiers of the not-so-Barmy Army. They looked a bit glum, but then having forked out a few thousand quid to end up in Nagpur on a Tuesday night, with your team predicted to get ground into the red dust tomorrow … well it’s hardly reason to break out the champagne. ‘Shah and the Stragglers’: we could almost have been a ‘60s pop group.

By 11pm the main drag in Nagpur was as quiet as India gets, which is not very. The higgledy piggledy stained-concrete shops were dark except the paan joints and a box-like, neon-lit Biryani restaurant, glowing like a green and pink ice cube. Down the sidestreets, black as tar, the only light came from the single headlight of the odd rickshaw, like an oncoming train in the movies. The England hotel was as sombre as a church.

Perhaps it was just the weirdness of all of these Englishmen from Rochdale and Runcorn and Reading arriving in one of India’s slower backwaters, a place most never dreamed existed before the schedule was announced. Perhaps it was the late-night touch down. Perhaps it was the malaria pills sending me potty. And perhaps Super Fred really can do perform a miracle. But on the last flight to Nagpur there was an ominous feeling that we were about to watch something nasty happen.

Today Nasser Hussain and Mike Atherton, in India on Sky TV duty, slipped almost unnoticed through a busy airport and out into Mumbai, a money-making city of muggy sunshine and honking horns. Which made you wonder: is it just a lazy cliché to say that cricket’s ‘like a religion on the subcontinent’. Then, just as I had that thought, my bubbly taxi driver excitedly pointed out Hussain, started a detailed and unprompted analysis of his captaincy, asked me about Alastair Cook, and reeled off the exact scores that Dravid and Laxman made in the Eden Gardens Aussie-bashing of 2000-01. Later, I checked the scorecard. He was dead right.

Any more injuries for England and Nasser might get a call © Getty Images

Even to someone who occasionally bumps into the pair, there’s still something otherworldly about seeing Atherton standing at the baggage carousel, just like Joe Bloggs, or Hussain waiting in line to change his travellers’ cheques. You forget they were just human beings, doing a job like everyone else. As a journalist it’s a chastening thought; we don’t have some laptop-pounding know-all damning us for having a bad day at the office - and I don’t think we’d like it if we did.

Given that in the 1990s England fetched David Gower out of a West Indies press box to play, the former captains Athers and Nasser must be a little worried. A fortnight ago it was India who had a captaincy problem: amateur psychologists suggested England could create confusion by stirring up the Ganguly situation like a wasp’s nest. Two weeks on, it’s England who have the problem. This tour was always going to be tricky for a captain: how to motivate an Ashes-winning squad who, as Andrew Miller recently pointed out, will never have to buy a meal or a drink in England again; how to switch focus from MBEs to India’s MO; whether to go for the throat or wait for their opponents to trip up. England have not won a Test in India since 1984-85; for Andrew Flintoff, in his first Test as captain, it's what they call a 'big ask'.

Still there is a sliver of hope. Funny things happen in India. En route to the hotel, we stopped at a set of lights and a kerbside salesman tried to sell me a book, a work by the Cambridge University economist Amartya Sen. In London, hawkers looking for a bit of cash squeegee your windscreen; in Mumbai they sell you books on philosophy. Yes, funny things happen in India. But England Test wins are not usually one of them.