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I wonder if the boyish Alastair Cook managed to catch Gordon Ramsay's latest sojourn in-between evensong and extra Latin prep this week. If he did, hopefully he'll have taken away some valuable lessons on how not to tour the subcontinent this spring.
 
The ghost of Tuffers hung like Banquo over the whole project. Needless to say Gordon  dutifully ticked off both the elephants and the poverty and squeezed in some cooking (sadly no dancing) along the way. His affirmative verbal tick commendably to the fore - "Don't fucking burn the bhajis, sunshine, !YES!" - Gordon single handedly put Anglo-Indian relations back a good 20 years.There was a lot of gratuitous swearing and shouting at the locals, clumsy flirtation with assorted dusky maidens and the usual nobility of poverty bollocks. Beefy's quip about Pakistan being the sort of place you'd want to send the mother-in-law  was a Ban Ki Moon piece of diplomacy compared to this guff.
 
So, young Alastair, take this away with you. Embrace the culture. Get out of the hotel. Get your hands dirty. Be polite and mind your manners. Smile. Enjoy the experience, you and your team are very lucky boys. It's not often playing for England can be compared to an away trip to Streatham and Marlborough in the Surrey league. We make the wearisome trip to an incomprehensible land to play on a dodgy track in front of no one, put up with the oppos odd and occasionally duplicitous ways, tolerate the limp sarnies and drink their pissy eurofizz. On more than a hundred grand a year we'd like you, KP and Mr Prior to do the same.
 
Us Poms spent much of the last 20 years trying to ape Australian ways. I suspect there's another lesson to be learnt here. From Tugga's adoption of an Indian orphanage to Brett Lee starring in Bollywood films, can their success in India be in some way attributed to embracing their Indian hosts, both the good and the bad bits? And as the subcontinent emerges as pre-eminent cricketing power, the England team should be seen to be gracious tourists for both cricketing and political reasons. Hopefully both English averages and our reputation abroad will be assuaged in coming months.