Ahmedabad
Sunday, December 9, 2001

Lining the streets of central Ahmedabad are stalls selling and weaving yarns of coloured thread – blue, purple, green, fluorescent pink. They spin on looms, looking as threatening as candy floss. But on January 14, covered in paste and lined with powdered glass, they will be used as weapons in the annual Ahmedabad kite competition. There they will rip the hands of the competitors and slice the strings of fellow kites out of the sky.

The Motera stadium is similarly deceptive. No-one would ever claim it was pretty. But it looks ramshackle and unthreatening – brick-lined flower beds beckon people to the ground, although everything apart from three sunflowers has been withered by the baking sun. The red soil pitch will turn viciously, probably before lunch on the first day. The crowd, notoriously noisy, will be on England's backs. The grime will swirl into the air and into the players' faces, lifted by the afternoon winds.

Ahmedabad was the state capital of Gujarat until 1970 and has been ruled by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. It has suffered famines, riots and earthquakes – the one last January killed 30,000 people in Gujarat. The cool, ordered Punjabi city of Mohali seems a long way away.

It was from Ahmedabad that Mahatma Gandhi started his famous march to protect people against the British government's monopoly on the production and sale of salt. And there are still plenty of the poor, even in what is India's richest state. A small girl toddles naked to squat in the littered pavement next to a sleeping ox, his hump of bone sticking upright like a bare bookshelf. Camels pull carts thought the streets. The thermal power stations sweat smoke, filth surrounds the railway line which runs from Delhi in the north to Mumbai in the south, the dried-up Sabarmati river looks like a wrinkled man. And all around is dust, dust.

England's practice was a three-and-half hour lethargic ramble in an oasis of green nets. One side of the tented-off grass sat the press, the other the players, sitting in the shade like the young rich from Tender is the Night surrounded by bowls of peaches and bananas. Angus Fraser, here as a writer and broadcaster, but with more Test wickets to his name than the whole of the England squad, volunteered himself for a 45-minute bowl, Graham Thorpe and Mark Butcher lazily hit tennis-ball catches to each other and Ashley Giles hobbled from ice bucket to shade.

Nasser Hussain later said that Giles had felt "very good", which suggests remarkable powers of recovery. He also confirmed that England would again play five bowlers and at least two spinners, maybe even three on a pitch which he thinks will "turn slower and lower [than Mohali] but will turn big". If England were to pick three spinners for the second Test on Tuesday it would be the first time since Eddie Hemmings, Nick Cook and John Emburey at Faisalabad in 1987-88 - a match slightly better remembered for Mike Gatting's row with Shakoor Rana.

Hussain chastised and praised. He slated England's fielding, and confirmed that Duncan Fletcher had had a stern word. But he offered some hope. "We believe we can get runs, we can win out here. They have great players but they also have a tail."

He also promised the delightful prospect of "turgid cricket".

The Indian press would just be grateful for competitive cricket, however turgid. They have already written England off - some comparing them unfavourably with Bangladesh – while Sunil Gavaskar wrote in his newspaper column that the English performance had been schoolboyish.

The Indian players arrived in an air-conditioned coach ten minutes after England left. While vultures swept the ground they practised with a green frisbee, all apart from Rahul Dravid, away at his brother's wedding. Connor Williams and Virender Sehwag coated their whole faces in suncream – naively copying Allan Donald. Tendulkar ran out in just a cap. He has no need for suncream. And most worrying for Hussain, no fear of England.

Tanya Aldred, our assistant editor, is covering the whole tour for Wisden.com.

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