India is just like a Cotswold B&B, really

There's an utterly charming sense of hospitality about this otherwise bewildering country. In the Vijay Merchant Enclosure (which admittedly costs four times as much as many of the Indian fans pay) there's an army of young people in starched white shirts serving out mineral water on demand, and distributing the free lunchboxes of mysteriously cross-cultural food.

Today they started passing round a Visitors' Book, a proper red bound one like you'd get in a small Cotswold B&B. Everyone dutifully signed and offered helpfully bland comments (including television's own Nick Hancock, a few rows in front, who had commented that it was 'warm').

Last summer, within the space of a month, both Mumbai and New Orleans were hit by catastrophic floods, and over a thousand people died in each city. In New Orleans, the tragedy prompted looting, muggings and a police shoot-to-kill policy (as well as blanket media coverage in the UK). In Mumbai, so I'm told, the flooding was the catalyst only for countless random acts of kindness from complete strangers (and almost no media coverage in the UK).

After a fortnight in this country, where I feel perfectly safe walking alone at night, there's a palpable sense that people feel to be welcoming and warm-hearted to a stranger is in the natural order of things. It's really quite refreshing.


The return of Little Jimmy

Three years ago, as a foreign tour (that time in Australia) disintegrated in a blizzard of injuries and bad cricket, a young man was plucked out of his short trousers and thrust into the limelight, where he outbowled all his more experienced cohorts: moving the ball both ways, in the air and off the pitch, and finding a consistently good length at considerable pace, young Jimmy Anderson seemed set to be the all-conquering pin-up boy of English cricket. Then it all went wrong, apparently mostly in the mind. He seemed to lose all confidence in his own abilities.

Today, fourteen months after his (disastrous) last Test appearance, we witnessed the second coming: with four wickets and a brilliant run-out, he's propelled England to what could be a winning position, in a Test where England were merely supposed to be making up the numbers. Throughout the day, he was England's best bowler, and nobody - not even the saintly Dravid - was ever comfortable facing him.

Last summer, England's Ashes victory was rightly attributed to our four-pronged pace attack, with Flintoff, Harmison, Hoggard and Jones each offering something special. But Jimmy Anderson's still only 23: if can get his head straight, he might have the talent to be the best of the lot.