Here’s another way that I was persuaded to part with more cash than was strictly necessary:

“I hate cricket,” he says – which is a surprise as he has a well-groomed Shahid Afridi beard, the same floppy hair and looks like he spends most of his days bowling over-quick legspin. I am sure it is Afridi.

“I hate cricket. There is too much money.” Mr Non-Afridi is a tour salesman. He organises trips for visitors to the likely sites around Delhi – the Taj Mahal being a popular destination and that’s where I am trying to go.

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Marcus Trescothick’s sad departure to England has created a mixture of confusion and bewilderment from many Indians – and his county have exacerbated a desperate situation.

The news broke late last night here. It is not a massive story for the locals but is of interest – they would like to know why one of the English teams’ most high profile players has headed home. And as the rumours leaked out, Somerset’s communication broke down.

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“Do you think you’ve done enough, Belly old chap?” asked Straussy as we walked off.

I says too right I’ve done enough, I’m dying to get in ‘cos I’ve been out here for an hour and a quarter and I bet you Priory and Andersony have hogged Championship Manager on the laptop and changed all our tactics and everything. Priory’s convinced that the way to win is to shout at the machine as much as possible and jump up and down, and Andersony just presses buttons at random with no sort of plan at all.

Straussy looked a bit concerned which was strange as I didn’t think he was that bothered for Championship Manager but thinking about it he probably just wanted to use the laptop for checking his stock market profiterole and seeing if he is still rich. He said he’d taken a bath in Asian derivatives the other day. I asked mum what it meant and she said that it was a dirty business most likely and I shouldn’t think about such things.

But when we got back up in the dressing room we seen that Official Team Video Technical Advisor Mike Garaway had got hold of it (the laptop, not the stock market profiterole) and was studying it like it was the latest copy of Zoo Magazine or something – i.e. well interesting but quite challenging to read. Tell you what, if we could get him on the Championship Manager team I reckon he could really be something. Brainbox.

But then Coach Mooresy comes over and he says he has given Official Team Video Technical Advisor Mike Garaway a new programme to follow. Apparently he used to sit there and log every single ball that we face and what it does and where the batsman played it. I said that sounds like a well boring job and he says it’s no too bad as long as Colly isn’t in and not to tell Mooresy but if Colly goes on and gets a few he just plays World Of Warcraft instead and then just fills in all the blocks and clever little nurdles down to fine leg later on. But Mooresy has apparently come up with an even better system.

From now on Official Team Video Technical Advisor Mike Garaway just watches the England batsman and every time the batsmen does something positive then Official Team Video Technical Advisor Mike Garaway presses a big red button on the front of the laptop marked ‘Positives’.

This saves a lot of time and effort and that way, at the end of the day Mooresy knows exactly how many positives we can be taking from the day at the end of the day, which at the end of the day is what it’s all about.

Apparently my innings today had no fewer than several positives to be drawn in that I’ve gone out there in a difficult situation, almost a no-win situation if you like and, although we haven’t won, I had everything to lose and in fact we didn’t lose.

We drewed.

Mooresy says the next step is to take not getting out when there is nothing whatsoever to be gained or lost and try and translate that into not getting out when it might actually make a bit of difference. I said yeah and he said good and then Official Team Video Technical Advisor Mike Garaway let me press the big red ‘Positives’ button a few times and everyone seemed pretty pleased.

Alan Tyers sat next to Ian Bell in English

Tis the season and so on and so forth, which – as far as English cricket is concerned – can only mean one thing: a Christmas wish-list for Kevin Pietersen…

A key to Monty’s mind. If KP can unlock the secret that prevents Panesar from varying both his pace and the angle of his attack, he could be on to an Ashes winner.

A copy of In-Out Fields Made Easy. OK, so this book hasn’t been written yet, but it shouldn’t take long. The trick is not to use them against world-class batsmen riding the crest of an emotional wave while your one-man attack plays gamely into his hands.

A small voodoo doll. Naturally, it will bear a startling resemblance to Yuvraj Singh, who will suddenly find himself wincing in pain every time he amuses friends with his really very good rabbit impression.

A score of over 60 from Alastair Cook. He managed it once last year, but didn’t get beyond 76, so wouldn’t it be lovely if he could be lured closer to three figures, as he was on a constant basis in the first half of his international career.

A How-To guide on the referral system. England haven’t used it yet, and it arguably cost them victory at Chennai. But Pietersen should beware the fate of Brendon McCullum this week. Wrongly given caught behind by Rudi Koertzen against West Indies at Napier, the decision was then wrongly upheld by the TV umpire Mark Benson.

A juicy IPL contract. That Stanford loss was plain careless, and now there’s talk of the IPL staging matches in England next year. The combination of playing at home for lost of money ought to be too much to resist, even if Hampshire do demand he hands over some of the dosh to them.

A big, angry Steve Harmison. We know the score by now. Drop him, make him mad, pick him, call him the best thing since Dean Jones asked Curtly Ambrose to take off his sweatband, then wait for it all to go wrong again. To get him right for the Ashes, Pietersen will have to persuade the selectors to drop Harmison some time in May.

A pressure-resistant No.3. If Ian Bell’s not careful, the Australians will not need Shane Warne to remind them to dust off the Shermanator gags. And he has to hit them with a better retort than “I’ve heard worse”.

A reprieve for Old Trafford. Not quite sure how this one works, but it would be great if it did.

Happy Christmas!

Lawrence Booth writes on cricket for the Guardian. His third book, Cricket, Lovely Cricket? An Addict’s Guide to the World’s Most Exasperating Game is out now published by Yellow Jersey

Mohali is a ground I will always associate with frustration. Two-and-a-half years ago, I arrived at the Mohali ground for the second Test still without a press pass.

I had expected to be given one when I arrived at Nagpur for the first Test, but owing to some bureaucratic difficulties concerning the BCCI it had not materialised. I was given a temporary pass for the Nagpur game but assured, after a great deal of emailing, queuing to meet people in offices and punching the air with frustration, that there would be one waiting for me at Mohali.

So the day before the game, as the press all gathered to watch England practise, the gentleman who I’d been told would have my pass appeared in a blazer and sashayed around asking if anybody had any problems. I asked him if he had a press pass for me.

“No”, he shouted. “I do not have any press passes for anyone.”

“But I was told you would have one for me.”

“I don’t. And I’m not giving any more out. Who do you work for anyway?”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose I’m a freelancer.”

It is true that I didn’t have a great deal of actual journalism to do, although I had some. And if I was perhaps a little guilty of over exaggerating in my attempts to secure a pass at least I had gone to the bother of over exaggerating through the correct channels.

“If you’re a freelancer, you’re definitely not having one.”

“Can you tell me why?”

Suddenly he erupted at me with the anger of a man trying to sell me something and not taking no for an answer.

“Just shut up! Shut up and stop asking me things. That is it.”

And then he just wandered off, leaving me shell-shocked and everybody else staring at me wondering what I could have said that offended this man so much. I was later told that Duncan Fletcher himself had stopped to watch me getting yelled at and found it funny. It may sound ridiculous now, but seriously, Duncan Fletcher. Laughing. That’s what I was told.

The next day, after considerable wrangling I turned up to the ground with a temporary pass secured elsewhere and made my way to the press box. Despite assurances in fairly aggressive terms that I was not expected, I found a desk reserved for me.

As play got underway I sat at my desk. It was only then I realised why: it was impossible to see any of the field of play. All I could see was a huge pillar. I stood up to get a better view but was told to sit down. In the corner of the room there was a television and I asked if somebody might turn it on. It flickered to life and after a few minutes it was possible to make out definite cricketing action.

It was New Zealand versus West Indies.

In a maze.

Running.

Sachin chasing me. Can’t get away from him. He’s hitting me. Again and again. He’s too clever, too strong. I try to go faster. Faster. Faster. Faster is better. But still he comes. Now Kevin is shouting at me, asking me where everyone should stand. I don’t know, I can’t think properly with Sachin hitting me and cackling. I tell Kevin to make them stand in the way, stop Sachin from hitting me. But it’s not Kevin. It’s my aunt. And I’m in school. Why is my aunt in my school?

Alarm rings. A dream. Just a dream.

Pick up the alarm clock. Throw it at the wall. Rebounds and hits the mantelpiece, knocks over my ‘Greatest Lutonian 2006 (Runner Up)’ trophy. Bloody Nick Owen. Pick the alarm clock up again. All about practice. Throw it in exactly the same way. Hits the trophy again. Same throw, same result. Strange. Try it again. Same thing. Try throwing it a bit faster. Same result. Good areas? But trophy broken now. Try again. Same thing.

Some hours later, I’m ready to start the day. I have a one-on-one session with Ashley Giles.

I have to meet him in the hotel gift shop. Gilo collects interesting paperweights, both domestic and international. He says it keeps him sane. He’s buying one when I come in. “Check this beauty out,” he says, and throws it to me.

After I have bought him a replacement one, and said sorry to the cleaner, we start the tutorial.

“The hang of bowling over the wicket into the rough nearly got you have,” he says. “Taught you well I have.”

I ask him why he is talking in that weird way. He says it’s like in Star Wars, he is the ‘Jedi Master’ and I am the ‘Apprentice’.

“I haven’t seen it,” I tell him.

He looks disappointed. He asks if I want to see his impression of somebody called Frank Spencer instead. I don’t get it. I’m not familiar with the TV show ‘Allo ‘Allo, so that’s wasted on me as well.

Gilo’s rubbing his temples now, sighing.

“Look,” he says. “Being a spinner is about more than taking wickets.”

“That’s good,” I say.

“Too right,” he agrees. “It’s also about being good value in the dressing room, about being part of the team, keeping spirits up.”

We spend the rest of the session practising telling golf jokes very, very slowly. Apparently I’m getting the hang of it. Gilo is pleased.

Alan Tyers does a nice line in alarm clocks

John Stern’s blog yesterday highlighted the questions that remain for England despite near three and a half days of dominance in Chennai. Can Monty Panesar influence a Test when England need him to? Are James Anderson and Steve Harmison consistent enough to play together in the same England side? Is the balance right in England’s go-slow top-five?

With these issues in mind, we asked our panel: Should England make any changes in Mohali?

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Not a lot separates Ian Bell’s numbers (44 Tests, 2947 runs, average 41.50, eight hundreds) from Paul Collingwood’s (40 Tests, 2806 runs, average 42.51, seven hundreds). But in practice they are a world apart – and Chennai was faithful to the rule. Bell failed twice under pressure (sure, he got two good balls: this is Test cricket), while Collingwood scored a hundred that ought to have paved the way for an England win. As distillations of the two men’s careers go, this seemed perfect.

Bell will be 27 by the time the new English summer starts. It is more than four years since he began his Test career with an assured 70 against West Indies at The Oval. Yet he still seems determined to fulfil Stuart Law’s assessment of him as “that timid little creature”. Since apparently coming of age as a Test batsman with 199 against South Africa at Lord’s, he has made one fifty in eight innings. He is in danger of wasting the investment England have placed in him. Whisper it, but he is in danger of becoming a 21st-century Graeme Hick: always gifted, occasionally glorious, maddeningly frail.

When it comes to pure batsmanship, Bell’s gilded cover-driving and defensive solidity leaves Collingwood’s leg-side nudges and concrete foot movement for dead. But cricket, we are always reminded, is played as much in the mind as it in the middle, and not enough of Bell’s big runs have come when England really needed them. The list looks something like this: three good innings in Pakistan in late 2005; 87 at Perth in 2006; 97 against West Indies at Old Trafford in 2007; 110 at Napier in 2008; and that 199 (even then, you wondered why he didn’t just nudge Paul Harris round the corner for that extra single). It is not exactly exhaustive.

Collingwood, by contrast, is England’s mini-Steve Waugh, a player at his best when there is a hole in a dyke to plug. His 135 against South Africa at Edgbaston when he was just one failure away from being dropped was a masterpiece of self-preservation. His 108 at Chennai was sheer guts, if a touch slow towards the end. Yet the lack of aestheticism in his play means he never seems to be far from the chop.

Put simply, if Bell wants to play for England well into his 30s, he needs to sit down with Collingwood and discuss the art of making ugly runs. If he doesn’t, Owais Shah will get his chance sooner rather than later – possibly as soon as Friday morning in Mohali. Many chats with Bell last year revealed a desire to turn himself into England’s Ricky Ponting: the classy linchpin at No. 3 who dictates the course of matches. But Ponting is a unique talent, perhaps an inimitable one. Surely a better role model is Mahela Jayawardene, who barely got out of second gear while taking England for 195 and 213 not out in Colombo and Galle a year ago. Bell needs remorseless 150s, not glittering 70s.

He also needs to stop worrying about appearances. In the first game of that Sri Lanka series, he very nearly cracked it. But the end felt all too familiar. In the first innings his beautiful 83 was ruined when he decided to go down the track to Muttiah Muralitharan and was caught at short midwicket with Sri Lanka’s bowlers at his mercy. In the second he all but saved the game with Matt Prior before missing a ball delivered from round the wicket from Murali that he probably should have kept out. So very agonising. So very Bell.

We all want Bell to succeed. England need his experience when Australia visit next summer. But where is the line drawn? If Collingwood can get into his head, we might, finally, be able to stop asking the question.

Lawrence Booth writes on cricket for the Guardian. His third book, Cricket, Lovely Cricket? An Addict’s Guide to the World’s Most Exasperating Game is out now published by Yellow Jersey

Such was the emotion in Chennai and the quality of the cricket, it seems churlish and inappropriate to pick holes in England’s performance, as one would normally do. But hey, we’re world-class churls so what the heck?

It is not so much England’s performance that raises questions. Indeed, they performed outstandingly for, as KP said, 70 per cent of the game. There were precious few ‘what ifs’ or individuals who could be accused of letting the side down.

Bluntly, England were beaten by a brilliant team at the peak of their powers (Rahul Dravid excepted), which is no disgrace.

But the problems they have are more fundamental and have been apparent for a while without being dealt with.

Firstly, there is Monty Panesar, who took 0 for 105 and went for almost four an over in the second innings at Chennai. Since the summer of 2007, Panesar has taken 44 wickets at 35, a return that borders respectability. But worryingly his strike-rate in that time is 76.8, or a wicket every 12 overs or so. Over his 34-Test career, it’s 68.1 so there appears to be a substantial downturn.

David Capel, the Northants coach, has said Monty lacked match practice. Er, what about Andrew Strauss? And the point is that Monty has been off-the-boil for a while. I haven’t heard any of the myriad experts who pontificate on this game say that Monty has actually been bowling well this past year. The universal consensus is that he’s bowling too fast, not teasing the batsman enough. Is it only Monty who doesn’t see this? He needs a mentor badly, someone with Test experience who can cajole and instruct and take him to the next level. In the meantime, he should be left out of the second Test and replaced with a fourth seamer.

Now England’s other problem. It is rare that I agree with Sir Ian Botham but he was spot on about England’s loss of momentum with the bat on the fourth evening infecting their fourth-innings display with the ball. Paul Collingwood has scored two hundreds in his last three Tests. The first of those (v South Africa at Edgbaston) was his fastest for England, the 108 at Chennai his slowest. Indeed the 108 was the third slowest 50-plus score of his 40-match Test career. The Edgbaston hundred was a last-chance saloon innings, nothing to lose and everything to gain. Chennai was the opposite.

Collingwood has had to play at his absolute optimum to keep his head above water in Test cricket. He is, in some ways, the Ashley Giles of this England team: the added-value, top bloke of the dressing room. The difference is that skills-wise Giles was a peripheral figure in the side whereas Collingwood is a pivotal figure in the middle order. I don’t believe England will win the Ashes with the batting line-up they have now. It is too one-paced and has been for ages. So what to do? Collingwood was very fortunate to be recalled at Edgbaston last year but he’s hardly likely to be dropped now (even though he should be). Ian Bell, talented though he is, must be the one looking over his shoulder while Owais Shah curses the iniquities of England selection for the umpteenth time.

John Stern is editor of The Wisden Cricketer

Virender Sehwag plays on his opponents’ composure. Actually, he doesn’t so much play on it as rip a hole in it and wiggle a knife around inside.

Composure is one of the secondary attributes in cricket. If you’re looking at a batsman, you examine his hand-eye coordination and his footwork. For a fast bowler, it’s his pace and whether he swings the ball. But without composure, these strengths can just evaporate.

The very best players use composure to widen the gap between themselves and other players at the key moments. The bigger the occasion, the better Shane Warne would play. He may have bowled much the same but his opponents’ decision-making started to desert them and Warne wasn’t averse to pointing this out, exacerbating the situation.

This is how Virender Sehwag bats. If he attacks, bowlers wilt. They bowl worse and he flourishes. He probably figures that a cut for six over third man’s head earns him enough bad balls to justify the risk. Maybe he doesn’t think like that but that’s how it works.

Steve Harmison and James Anderson are excellent bowlers but Andrew Flintoff is an excellent and composed bowler. Where the opening bowlers found themselves bowling short and wide against their will, conceding seven or eight runs an over, Flintoff kept his line and length and went for less than two. Against Virender Sehwag in full flight, that’s nothing short of a miracle.

But composure works two ways. Cricketers need to stay composed when things are going badly and they also need to stay composed when things are going well. After a four and a six off successive deliveries, Sehwag had reached 61 off 35 balls. At this point Monty Panesar went over the wicket and bowled into the footmarks. This could be construed as negative, but really it was asking Sehwag a question. Was he composed enough to retreat a step from his all-aggression approach, knowing there was great risk if he persevered?

Of the remaining Panesar deliveries that he faced, Sehwag played out 13 dot balls and hit a leg-stump full-toss for four. He was as composed as he had been at the outset. The prospect of a record run-chase didn’t faze him. If you were Virender Sehwag, why would it?

See King Cricket’s regular blog at www.kingcricket.co.uk. King Cricket is a cult figure in the world of cricket blogs and was TWC’s first Best-of-blogs winner in April 2008.