Did the Kolkata Test matter? Ask the gent with the beehive down his trousers © AFP

India are still top dogs. Yes they were at home, but home means expectations, nay demands, of victory, and the press after Nagpur left none in doubt about the retribution that would be dished out should Dhoni and Co fail to seal the deal in Kolkata. Three fluffed catches on the last day suggested sweaty palms and jittery fingers. But Test cricket demands patience, even when the margins are shrinking. Ten balls to go and things looked ominous. A few seconds later, they were cavorting in the outfield.

The Kolkata Test was a vindication, not just for MS Dhoni, but for the oft-derided ICC ranking system. It was once considered an ingenious but entirely superfluous statistical contrivance for measuring how much better Australia were than the rest. Sometimes it was 20 points. Sometimes it was 18. Jolly interesting and all that, but what’s the point? When your car is covered in cold white stuff, you don’t need to consult a meteorologist to find out it’s snowing.

Well ranking-sceptics should now recant. That list of numbers is not only a barometer of who’s good and who’s not, it has become a competition in itself. Thanks to the ICC spreadsheets, this match meant something; it wasn’t just one more stop on the bus route of reciprocal competition. The pre-match hype had everything except Don King. Newspapers competed for hyperbole. Would Bhajji have screamed like a lunatic and raced off towards the stands as though he had a beehive down his trousers if this had been just another game?

Best of all, Eden Gardens was full. For a Test match. It isn’t pink balls, floodlights or cheerleaders that the punters want. It’s context. Every Test, as far as possible, should mean something; it should be a small piece of a bigger picture. This doesn’t pollute or detract from Test cricket; it adds another delicious layer to the anticipation and the tension and helps marketing men sell it to newcomers without having to give it artificial injections of razzmatazz.

And non-cricket fans, strange folk though they are, deserve to experience the joy of Tests. This five-day stuff reaches parts that other formats cannot. It ebbs and flows, it has currents and undercurrents, and you can’t take your eyes off it. The slow siege of the South African second innings demanded attention, the fielders creeping closer and closer as Amla, exhibiting stony impassiveness, dead-batted and flicked the Indian spinners, reading every ball from the hand.

This series has also featured one of the game’s true artists at his best. Tendulkar, found out by a slightly loose drive in the first innings in Nagpur, avoided that tangle of technical adjustment and declining confidence that entraps so many batsmen when they can’t trust a favourite shot. In his second innings, he simply cut it out. Such self-imposed restrictions can bring out the best in an artist. Georges Perec wrote an entire novel without using the letter “e” and Tendulkar constructed a brilliant century without employing the drive. It is not facetious to mention them in the same sentence.

	The pitch for the Kolkata Test? Why not? © Getty Images

Some weeks ago, I suggested that gagging orders for professional cricketers might contribute to the advancement of humankind. Not everyone thought it was a good idea, but it was gratifying to read last week that two more of the species have confirmed my faith in the benefits of an immediate restriction of their right to free or indeed un-free speech. In a moment, Paul Collingwood. But first, I give you Mystic Chris Gayle.

Last week he announced that West Indies would beat Australia 4-1 in a one-day series. Now, we all like a little bit of pre-game trash talk, Chris, and we all like fairy stories, but I’m not sure the two really mix. I mean, there’s got to be at least a hint of reality in there or the kids will lose interest. If you’d announced that you’d been kidnapped by aliens or developed the ability to travel through time by twitching your nose, then maybe you’d have had a little more credibility, but 4-1? In Australia?

It gets worse. In between packing suitcases, practising his forward defensives and having five lie-downs (or burnout-reducers) a day, it’s Paul "Chuckles" Collingwood, doing his bit to bring back the good old days, when pale-skinned types travelled the world, sticking their flag where it ought not to be and having a good old giggle at how jolly backward Johnny Foreigner really was.

“It won’t be easy to find a golf course in Bangladesh. If there is one, they’ll probably have wooden clubs.”

Wooden clubs, Paul? Why’s that? Oh I see, because Bangladesh is a relatively poor country. I get it. It’s a GDP gag. Good one, Colly! Got any good Haiti jokes? No? Probably not, best to quit while you’re ahead, eh. And thanks for giving us another reason to hope for a thumping England defeat, besides your part-time captain and the forestalling of Volume 2 of the Alastair Cook Story.

And now for a prediction of my own. The second Test of the Kumble-Tayfield Trophy (thanks to Hilton for that suggestion) will be played out on a pitch that is dryer than the Gobi desert, for which India will field ten spinners, with Dhoni available to turn his arm over, should the game go into a third day. India will win, South Africa will lose and much tut-tutting will ensue from certain quarters.

But I don’t see the problem. How warped is a game in which a "result pitch" is something shady and slightly disreputable, likely to bring a groundsman a sternly worded letter from the ICC Pitch Sterilisation Committee? The concept of the "fair pitch" is one of the dullest ideas in modern cricket. Why must every 22 yards be like every other 22 yards? Let curators give full rein to their imagination and let’s see the return of the minefield, the cabbage patch and the sticky dog.

	Amla adds just the touch of modernity to his old-timer’s mien with a Powerade bottle © Getty Images

Sometimes it is worth reminding ourselves how fortunate we are to be able to enjoy the Victorian anachronism that is Test match cricket. The best team in the world are taking on their nearest rivals in what would, if it took place in the English Premier League, be labelled a “top-of-the-table clash” and be played out in a maelstrom of tripping, diving, rolling, gesticulating and screaming. And that just from the coaches.

India against South Africa has been a treat so far. Awesome laser-guided fast bowling from Steyn; impossible jagging bounce from the gangling Morkel; Sehwag restraining his instincts in a clammy-palmed innings that almost rescued his team, before cutting loose and falling into a trap. And all this on top of Amla’s Old Testament batting and the delights of watching Mishra’s delicate but unrewarded curvers and dippers.

Yet it has been devoid of bile and belligerence. Perhaps that is partly due to the surroundings. The stadium in Nagpur has the atmosphere of a sleepy provincial town square. The polished white steps up to the pavilion are covered with a graceful summer awning. Spectators eat ice cream and chat to one another at leisure. There are even potted marigolds on the ledge of the players' balcony.

And for once, the commentary has suited the occasion. Danny Morrison, in particular, seems more relaxed than when I last listened to him, during the IPL. Perhaps because his Test duties do not require him to plummet down an inflatable slide, play at being a DJ or turn up to the coin toss wearing a cheerleader. He is merely expected to sit in a chair and talk about cricket. Gratitude has been evident in every syllable and so far he has been rather good.

Still, whilst I’m not one for unnecessary hype, I’m not sure that the official title of this heavyweight bout really conveys the significance of the contest. No disrespect to Mr Jaypee or his distinguished colleague, Mr Infratech, but the modern cricket fan has come to expect a hyphenated brace of legends for these things. I’m guessing the Cronje-Azharrudin Shield might not create the right ambience, and the Gavaskar-Procter Vase probably isn’t a goer either. How about the Pollock-Prabhakar Prize? The Kirsten Cup? The Ganguly-Cullinan Chalice?

Meanwhile, over in Australia, Chris Gayle surprised many people when he predicted a 4-1 victory for the men in maroon in the Haigh-Cozier Trophy. On the face of it, it could be said that Sunday’s 113-run defeat in Melbourne casts some doubt on the wisdom of the prediction. But the Jamaican plays a long game, you see. Now that they have swiftly dispensed with the 1, big Chris and his men can start work on the 4.

	Oh pipe down already, or you'll have detention with Shane Watson © International Cricket Council

I’ll be honest. I don’t like teenagers. Their music is dumb, their hair is too long, they are having way, way too much fun and most irritatingly of all, I’m not one of them. So, the Under-19 World Cup, an entire tournament confined to adolescents, was never going to appeal as a prospect. Still, if Sky has gone to the trouble of sending an outside broadcast unit all the way to a field in New Zealand, it is the least I can do to tune in and pretend to take an interest.

So on Saturday, I sat down to watch the highlights of the India versus Pakistan quarter-final. It was a little disorienting. A 50-over game, reduced to 23 overs per side, then squeezed into a half-hour transmission. Take out the ad breaks, the replays and the waffle and it boiled down to a collection of sixes, wickets and the more amusing cock-ups. Every piece of action seemed only vaguely related to what had gone before. It was like watching a French film.

I am not qualified to say whether the teams were any good, although after witnessing a particularly horrendous slog across the line, I had to drape a handkerchief over my marble bust of Peter May, lest it start to weep. But all told, they did a fair impression of a proper grown-up one-day game, albeit with more hair and fewer beer bellies. They even managed a few circus shots (I counted at least two Dilscoops, one of which actually worked).

I could have lived without the cranked-up celebrations though. I haven’t seen that much roaring, posing or strutting since I stopped watching WWF. It is not possible for the sane viewer to watch a cricketer puff up his chest, stick out his bottom lip and howl like a baboon in the mating season without feeling a spasm or two of irritation. When the cricketer in question is a teenager who has just dismissed one of his peers with a long hop, the irritation is increased exponentially. I blame Shane Watson.

Nick Knight was Sky’s man in a suit for this occasion, paying his dues before he moves on to bigger things. He troubles me, that one. It’s the eyes. At first, I thought he was just frightened. But now I’m sure he’s trying to exert some kind of mind control through hypnosis. I haven’t worked out what he’s up to yet, but he doesn’t appear to want to join the Botham-Gower-Lloyd-Hussain-Atherton axis of washed-up old warriors. I can imagine him hosting a Saturday night quiz show or founding a cult in the wilds of Warwickshire. He’s plainly someone to watch, by which I mean, keep your eye on him. Just remember to blink.

	Careful son, you could crick your shoulder hoisting a bat that large © Associated Press

Be warned, fellow cricket lovers, there are some odd folk about. Some of them may even be living under the same roof as you. Earlier this week, having set my alarm for a refreshingly early hour of Sunday morning, I was met with a quizzical look from Mrs H. I explained that it was necessary to rise at such a time, lest I miss the toss in Chittagong.

“Chitta-what?”

“Chittagong. It’s in Bangladesh.”

“So?”

I patiently outlined to her the nature of the feast of cricket that was about to ensue in that part of Asia, between the No. 1-ranked team in the world and another, slightly lower-ranked, but nonetheless equally determined XI. I cheerfully invited her to guess which was which. She declined the opportunity.

“Who’s going to win?” she asked, wearily.

“India,” I replied, “unless it rains.”

“So why are you going to bother watching it then, if you already know who’s going to win?”
I had no answer to such a question. How can you even begin to cross the gulf of understanding implied by a comment of that nature? I wasn’t planning to spend four (or possibly five) mornings rising abruptly in the pitch dark, banging my knee on the bedside table and stumbling bleary-eyed down the stair, merely to find out who would win.

It was cricket. It was cricket and it was on television, and as such I felt that unless I let the Hughes eyes rest on the spectacle for at least an over or two, I’d let the side down, somewhat. Besides there’ll be plenty of time to sleep during the county season. Right now the schedule is packed tighter than Jacques Kallis’ lunch box and I intend to miss none of it, however many espressos it takes.

And having seen a lot of Bangladesh in the pyjama formats, I was keen to see what approach the Tigers brought to Test match cricket. Exactly the same approach, as it turned out. A procession of slightly built young men arrived at the crease and attempted to belt the cover off the ball. That is proper cricket, as Geoffrey Boycott probably wouldn’t say. Surely Mushfiqur Rahim’s life-affirming century with a bat that is a size too big for him is an early contender for innings of the year?

But the real star of the show was India’s stand-in captain. I hope that when he retires, someone takes the time to put together his best microphone performances and releases them on DVD. Virender’s Greatest Interviews. I would buy it. So would you.

He is the "before" character in the "Welcome to Diplomacy" introductory video shown to all new recruits to the Indian Foreign Office. Unfortunately, the brilliance of Sehwag’s interview technique is not always fully appreciated. Certain sections of the Chittagong crowd booed him on Thursday.

“You’re very popular here, aren’t you,” smirked Ravi Shastri.

“Yes I am,” replied Sehwag.

Put your irony away, Ravi, Virender is impervious. Before the game, the Mighty V had stated that he didn’t believe Bangladesh could take 20 Indian wickets. This did not go down well either. I suppose it shows how upside down the world is these days, that when a man gives a straight answer to a straight question, he is regarded either as a villain or an eccentric. Anyhow, as it turned out, in the first Test, Bangladesh took precisely 18 Indian wickets. One-nil to Mr Sehwag, I think.

	The tri-series: an avant-garde celebration of the essential absurdity of human endeavour © Associated Press

Some have suggested that the Tri-Nations Tournament in Bangladesh is a less-than-gripping addition to the cricket calendar. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Triangular Extravaganza in Mirpur is an avant-garde celebration of the essential absurdity of human endeavour as seen through the medium of cricket.

Just as the abstractionists once stripped the figurative arts down to bare lines, so the Bangladesh Cricket Board has daringly done away with all that is superfluous in our sport. By insisting on playing the second half of every match in a paddy field, the 50-over game has been reduced to its essence: the toss.

So let’s have no more negative talk about this immensely significant, if ever so slightly damp, competition. I have enjoyed every minute of the Isosceles Cup and I have already planned my schedule for the final on Wednesday:

07:40 Secure my seat in front of the television
07:45 Cheer the arrival of the titles sequence
07:50 Whoop enthusiastically as the captains trudge out to the middle
07:52 Shout ‘Heads!’ or ‘Tails!’ as the mood takes me
07:52 Gaze open-mouthed in suspense as the coin hangs in the air
07:53 Listen intently as Dhoni (or it may be Sangakkara) utters those now familiar words, “I think we’ll have a bowl.”
07:54 Turn off television and go back to bed.

The Hypertridimensional Shield has, in addition to rendering overs 1-100 entirely superfluous, enabled me to watch some players I don’t see enough of. Amit Mishra is a case in point. Of the roughly 27 spinners employed by India during Sunday’s game, Mishra was the only one who caused the ball to rotate on its axis, and after a week of plucky tailenders hanging around forever, it made a pleasant change to see the batting duffers flail about like giraffes in a tar pit.

Skittling out the tail, of course, is part of the game that has gone out of fashion, like gentlemanly conduct or employing wicketkeepers who can catch. Which brings us to the curious case of Akmal, K. We learned this week that during the Sydney Test, the hapless keeper had been kept up nights trying to put his baby to sleep. But slow-motion footage obtained from the team hotel revealed some glaring flaws in his baby-rocking technique, described by Channel 9’s lullaby expert Ian Healy as "pretty ordinary". I’m afraid that the time has come for Mrs Akmal to seriously consider drafting in a replacement babysitter, at least for the remainder of the tour.

As for Kamran’s wicketkeeping, I don’t see what the problem is. I’m with the PCB on this. Five thousand dollars to teach someone to catch would have been an outrageous use of public money, money that could be better spent on desk stationery, name badges, executive trouser presses and the like. If absolutely necessary, I’m sure Ijaz Butt could be prevailed upon to give a demonstration. I mean, how hard can it be? Crouch like a frog, watch the ball, catch it if possible; it’s no big deal. And it’s not as if Kamran is getting the important stuff wrong. His chatter is some of the inanest and most annoying on the international circuit and that’s all you can ask for in a modern keeper.

Anyway, I hope the selectors see sense and retain him for the final Test, because he deserves to feature in the inevitable consolation victory. Yes, you read that correctly. By the strange laws of cricket physics currently affecting the game, it is blatantly obvious that Pakistan are going to triumph in Tasmania. I am as sure as if they were batting second in Dhaka. It’s their turn.

It is a lesson in the new cricket realities that the England management must absorb. I was somewhat dismayed at the weekend to see a twinkly-eyed Geoff Miller breathlessly extolling the virtues of his shiny new cricket team, with its multi-tooled bowling attack and devastating batsmen, reminding me of a 10-year-old boy telling all his friends what Santa had brought him. Long experience teaches us that Christmas Day’s glittery new toy is usually defunct by the time the snow begins to melt.

So delicately poised is the international balance of cricket power these days that for those who think they’ve reached the top, the taxi carrying nemesis is likely to be pulling in even before hubris has stepped onto the pavement. It would be far better, Geoff to describe your boys thus: "I believe England have the part-time batsmen to ensure that a likely defeat can be turned into a draw on a reasonably regular basis." Not sexy, I’ll grant you, but it might just satisfy the cricket gods and stave off the inevitable reversal in Johannesburg.

	Harbhajan and Praveen Kumar in the happy days before they moved on to assaulting farmyard animals © AFP

Well done India, bad luck Sri Lanka, and what a riotous bit of fun that was. Tuesday was the great Carnival of the Bat, a day-long festival in which anyone answering to the description of willow wielder was given the freedom of Rajkot. No request was denied, no whim unsatisfied. Every lunge, swing, dabble, poke and swipe was rewarded with a quartet of runs, sometimes more.

It was frantic, it was silly, it was sport on fast-forward, hyper cricket. At times it appeared that the whole ground had been turned into one of those amusement arcade games, as the batsmen kept pinging the boundary boards in pursuit of ever higher scores, like they were playing pinball.

As well as being thumpingly good television, the fact that the ball sailed so often through the air meant that we were afforded regular glimpses of the pleasing white buildings and trees of Rajkot. We also got a close-up of a poor, battered, greenish-white object nestling on the patterned shamiana. I felt sorry for that ball. I hoped someone would pick it up and hide it away in a darkened room so it could have a rest.

One or two fielders might have wished for the same thing. In an enterprising piece of captaincy, Dhoni had set a short point to Upul Tharanga. Praveen Kumar bowled the perfect ball, just back of a length. Tharanga obligingly fended it towards the recently placed fielder, ever so gently. And plop, Virat Kohli dropped it.

The commentators came rushing in with an explanation, the same explanation, in fact, that had been waved around a lot last week and was starting to look a bit tatty. Kohli, they explained, like Yuvraj Singh and many others before him, was surprised that the ball hadn’t arrived more quickly. I have to question this. As a hopeless fielder myself, I can empathise. But was it really surprise that proved Kohli’s undoing?

Let’s employ an analogy. You’re at your table, waiting for the soup to arrive. After an hour or so, the waiter hoves into view. As he reaches the table, you, unable to bear the tension any longer, make a lunge for the soup dish. “Sorry,” you mutter, sheepishly, “I was surprised.” At the next table, Sunil Gavaskar surveys the wreckage of shattered porcelain and scalded toes and nods sympathetically.

Still, I rather like Kohli. He bats pugnaciously, which is cricket shorthand for being short and aggressive. He seems to have more spirit than some of his rivals, and I can see him overtaking Suresh Raina in the queue for Rahul’s dressing room seat.

Raina, meanwhile, is the victim of persistent rudeness. We all know he struggles with the short ball, but it is the height of bad manners to continue to press him on the subject. Let the man have some privacy, please. But no, every time he approaches the crease, every medium-paced chancer believes himself Thomson incarnate. Net practice is clearly not enough to cure this problem. I suggest that Gary Kirsten arranges for all the doorframes in Raina’s house to be lowered by two feet and “Duck!” be painted onto the inside of his shades as a reminder.

Then there were The Men Who Beat Up Goats. Praveen started it. Having finally persuaded Kumar Sangakkara to commit an indiscretion, PK clenched both fists and roared. But the moment demanded more than a roaring double-clencher. So he took out his pent-up frustration by punching an invisible goat. A few balls later, Harbhajan fooled Dilshan and the Turbanator dealt the imaginary quadraped a fearful round-arm pummelling. It must have been a goat because it was too high for a sheep and too low for a horse. I expect a complaint from the Invisible Goat Protection League is on its way.

And finally, a word on the continuing fish-out-of-water flounderings of Mr Sanath Jayasuriya. The old boy seems determined to bring his batting average down to a more reasonable level so that future generations of hard-hitting Sri Lankan openers won’t feel so overshadowed; which is jolly decent of him. But short of painting “RETIRE” on the outfield in big white letters, it seems that nothing can persuade him to take his dignity and shuffle off into the hall of legends. On Tuesday he was down the order. It made no difference. An excess of footwork, an optimistic forward sally and an inability to locate the white leathery thing, and the old man of the sea was wading back to shore again, looking more rueful than a rue-salesman returning from a slow day at market.

	Dhoni, in an extraordinary display of impudence, shares a laugh with Ponting at the last presentation ceremony of the series © AFP

Hold the front page! Saddle up your high horses and head for the moral uplands. Our old friend the cricket scandal is back in town, barging into forums and message boards across the cyber world, banging a metaphorical fist on a virtual table and demanding our attention. Yes, to the sound of several hundred million people tut-tutting in unison, it was revealed earlier this week that MS Dhoni and associates had been “partying” just hours after a cricket match that they’d had the appalling bad manners to lose.

When I first heard the news, naturally I was horrified. How dare they, I thought. What kind of heartless, selfish, irresponsible reprobates go out “partying” whilst a nation is still weeping over a defeat at the hands of Australia, a catastrophic event almost unheard of in the history of Indian cricket, certainly since the last one.

At first I resisted the temptation to click on the link inviting me to goggle at the sordid pictures of these debauched playboys getting up to all manner of disgraceful things. To click or not to click, that is so often the question. But after a millisecond or two spent weighing up the ethical issues involved, I decided to click. Invariably, I find it is better to have clicked and regretted it than never to have clicked at all.

However, for the benefit of those who did not click, I will tell you what you missed. Almost immediately, the scandal-seeking viewer was presented with a photograph of Dhoni, resplendent in a Michael Jackson t-shirt and beaming a well-scrubbed smile. Other photos followed, all of them featuring the Indian captain, the aforementioned t-shirt and an ever-present smile. Sometimes there were other people standing next to him. They were also smiling, though they were not wearing Michael Jackson t-shirts. I do not know their names. So far, so dull.

Then things started to get interesting. Just who was that mysterious man in the background? Could it be Praveen Kumar? Possibly. Well, guess what he was doing, this man-who-could-be-Praveen? Brace yourselves. You may want to make sure your children are not reading at this point. He was…(whisper it)…smoking! Yes, I know, I could scarcely believe it. But that wasn’t all.

Still reeling from the shock of Smoking-gate, I was confronted with a photo of Ashish Nehra. And what was that in his hand? It was a glass containing what appeared to be some kind of carbonated fruit-themed soft drink! Who knows how many he’d already had! Should he really have been drinking himself into a caffeine-frenzy in the middle of such an important series? Did his mother know he was out? What would Sachin say? What a scandal, what a disgrace… what a… what a… complete waste of our time.

Whatever Dhoni and chums were doing, it was certainly not “partying”, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. They looked like a bunch of computer technicians relaxing in a provincial hotel between seminars on open source software and embedded systems programming. In other words, it looked like exactly the kind of tedious affair that you or I might have found ourselves at, not the carnival of celebrity bacchanalian excess I had been led to expect by the lurid headlines.

So just as Gary Kirsten will be analysing his team’s efforts against Australia, perhaps it is time that the Indian media held a performance review of their own. To help them out, I have compiled my own handy reference guide to help struggling journalists to tell the difference between a big fat juicy scandal and something that, er, isn’t. Here is just a brief extract:

Drugs test, failing of: Scandal

Coca Cola, drinking of (with or without ice): Not Scandal

Lap dancing club, visiting whilst on tour: Scandal

Michael Jackson t-shirt, wearing of: Not Scandal

Pedalo, falling from whilst drunk: Scandal

Pool, playing with friends: Not Scandal

Team-mate, hitting with cricket bat: Scandal

Grinning in company of consenting adults: Not Scandal

See how it works? We all love a scandal, but this, I’m afraid, was not it. Now raise your game, chaps, get off your comfortable office chairs, go out there and get us some real dirt. What’s that? Exclusive photographs of Graeme Smith looking at wallpaper samples just days before the coin toss for the crucial first Test? Ooh, that has to be worth a click…

	Dino alert: Ishant does his thing © Getty Images

After the sweaty, rustic charm of the Champions League, the resumption of international festivities has brought about a welcome elevation of tone. Wednesday’s clash of continents was full of good things, and whilst Sunday belonged to Australia, India struck back to stir the sediment of our jaded imaginations with the enlivening possibility of a genuinely suspenseful series. Dhoni, of course, was immense but it was the reinvigorated Ishant Sharma whom I most enjoyed watching, his angular, bent-forward lope to the crease putting me in mind of a velociraptor, ball perched between claws, intent on savaging the batsman’s knuckles (battered and swollen metacarpals being the tell-tale sign of an Ishant attack).

And with two of the game’s greatest batsmen on the same field of play, it was an ideal opportunity for the collector of cricket images to acquire more pieces for the memory. The batting displays in the Tendulkar and Ponting wings of my mind’s museum are already pretty crowded, so during the current series I have been on the look out for cameos, intriguing Tendlya or Punter-related items of sentimental or curiosity value.

A good collector has to be patient and wait for the right moment. On Wednesday it came in the 62nd over, when Lord Sachin was called upon to take human form and intervene at square leg. His stooping, tumbling dive was the everything-falling-out-of-pockets scramble across the platform of a portly businessman whose briefcase has become trapped in the door of a departing train. Yet he reached the ball. Returning the offending item to his captain with underarm disdain, he dusted down his suit and reassembled his composure. It was Tendulkar encapsulated: successful yet free of swagger; whole-hearted yet dignified.

Perhaps the same could also be said of the one-day format, still packing them in after forty years. Fifteen overs into the second innings, with the Aussie run-chase beginning to sigh like a yellow dinghy with a slow puncture, the atmosphere had eased from febrile raucousness to contented hubbub. But the double-tiered Vidarbha Cricket Stadium, an immense bowl of light, remained packed throughout. This summer’s Natwest Series, another 50-over bash assailed from all quarters as a motion-going-through exercise was also played out, under autumnal skies, to full houses.

It seems counter-intuitive then, that when cuts in the Future Tours Programme are being contemplated, so many people in the game seem to favour the end of a format that has remained so popular with the public. But then there has always been a perverse streak of anti-populism in our game, going right back to the 19th century. Those Victorian gentlemen of the MCC who reluctantly organised the county championship preferred sparsely attended three-day mid-week cricket to the popular weekend matches of the northern leagues. And a hundred years on, the English cricket establishment looked down its nose at the spectators who flocked to the Gillette Cup and the John Player League. The aristocratic distaste for making a profit may be long gone but the high-handed tendency to overlook the preferences of paying spectators lingers.

	Here we are now, entertain us © Getty Images

“Make some noise!” screamed the DJ, although from where I was sitting, the Hyderabad crowd needed no instructions in the etiquette of din-making. A raucous, joyful racket seems to come naturally to an Indian cricket audience, as does its counterpart: complete and utter silence. And the passing from one state to the other can be disconcerting to the non-Indian, sofa-bound viewer. In the time it took the white ball bowled by Peter Trego to pass VVS Laxman’s bat and crash into the stripe-y stumps, the deafening nightclub atmosphere of the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium was replaced by a quiet so complete and so eerie that we could have been watching a county game at Taunton. At first, I thought I’d pressed the mute button by mistake.

“I want rainy sixes”, read one banner in the crowd, clearly fashioned by a Somerset fan pining for the dampness of old Blighty. There was no rain, but there were sixes, my favourite ones being those dished up by Venugopal Rao, who for his first effort seemed barely to touch bat on ball but managed to send it crashing into the Deccan-blue plastic chairs beyond the long-on boundary. And, mercy of mercies, these big hits were entirely unsponsored. They were sixes in their natural state, as God intended them, with just a comforting cliché or two (“Oh that’s gone a long way!”) to mark their passing.

Some IPL innovations are hard to shake off, though. For some reason, Marcus Trescothick was miked up, and halfway through the Deccan innings Harsha Bhogle engaged him in a meandering conversation that redefined the word “interminable”. Eventually, poor Trescothick was allowed to concentrate on the game, although not before an edge from Rohit Sharma went flying past his left hand as he stood at slip. Bhogle speculated excitedly what it would have been like if Trescothick had been talking to them as he took the catch. More pertinently, we wondered what it would have been like if the incessant prattling of the studio-jockey had caused him to drop it.

And alongside the irrepressible Harsha was one time fast bowler and Atherton-baiter, Allan Donald, in his new incarnation as commentator-cum-expert. It’s early days but I am pleased to report that he is already showing the skills you need to ascend to the punditry pantheon. For example, as the Somerset run-chase faltered, Craig Kieswetter lofted a ball from Pragyan Ojha high towards long-on. Donald seized his moment. “Shot!” he exclaimed, confidently, “And this could be out as well… it is! Not a good shot!” With such admirable verbal dexterity, Donald could be a fixture in the commentary box for many years to come.

	Shahid Afridi does his best Saturday Night Fever impression © Getty Images

Some images from Saturday’s game linger in the mind. There were the ghostly faces of players shrouded in sunscreen. There was Mohammad Yousuf’s grim, expressionless concentration - a man of fortitude and endurance at work. There was the close-up of Harbhajan’s gleaming kara, his hand cradling the green-stained ball that looked like a moss-covered relic from a bone yard. There was 17-year-old Mohammad Aamer blowing Gautam Gambhir a kiss, Sachin Tendulkar’s exquisite square drive, the whirl of Simon Taufel’s finger to signal yet another free hit.

The surroundings played their part. As the stadium resounded with shouts, whistles, drums and music, the fierce light of a Highveldt mid-day seemed to belong to another continent entirely. Then slowly the Indian players’ uniforms began to turn darker shades of blue, night crept up unannounced and the broiling arena was transformed into a clammy, floodlit film-set.

It was compulsive television. And even though by the standards of one-day cricket it was not a nail-biter, you didn’t want to leave your sofa. We owed the players that much at least. They seemed to be walking on eggshells. Every movement, every gesture, every run, no-ball, misfield and stumble brought instant feedback from the crowd. The audience were part of this drama, not mere onlookers. The pressure was evident in the muted behaviour of the players, unleashed in moments of celebration and sometimes in wild, pleading appeals. India were the more inhibited team, made more bad decisions under pressure, and so they lost.

And in the midst of all this sweaty tension, there were some bizarre musical interludes. A failed Harbhajan sprawl and claw at third man was greeted with the chorus to “Come On Eileen”. A short while later, RP Singh had only just begun to wipe the grass stains from his trouser knees after an inelegant fumble when Abba’s “Dancing Queen” blasted out across Supersport Park. Either the DJ was a Pakistan supporter or he had a dangerously mischievous sense of humour.