Bangalore Test, Day 3
Friday, December 21, 2001

Despite the best diplomatic efforts of Nasser Hussain, lurking in every corner of this tour have been shadowy accusations of English racism. It started with the bag-dragging reluctance of some players to tour, was spiced up by the Mike Denness affair and muddled by the notoriously loose gob of Lord MacLaurin. It has also been stirred by a journalist - Michael Henderson, cricket correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph.

Henderson is an endearingly rash and kind man in his early forties, who loves classical music and real ale and is close friends with Mike Atherton. With his baby face and a brightly-coloured scarf draped around his neck like a bohemian morris dancer, he looks no more threatening than a kindly uncle with a passion for rich fruit cake. His pen is sometimes lyrical, framing paeans of praise to Tendulkar, and sometimes firing off bizarre rants about the evils of modern society or vicious examinations of players who have upset him. He is the most distinctive and infamous of the 40-odd writers who cover England, and now India knows all about him too.

His rasher statements on this tour have included an unforgettable dismissal of India's entire cuisine: "There's nowhere in this vast country of a billion people that can hold a candle to the range of sub-continental cuisine that one can find in a half-mile stretch in Rusholme, Manchester"; a two-fingered tribute to Ahmedabad - "a place of dirt, unrelieved boredom, inadequate facilities, no booze"; and a fulsome appreciation of Sourav Ganguly - "the most charmless man of all … a chump of a captain .... about as much use as a chocolate fireguard".

Senior executives at the website CricInfo, who have a deal to provide links to the coverage on the Telegraph website, are known to be worried about the effects Henderson's articles are having on their reputation among Indian readers. Hackles have certainly been raised. A senior Indian journalist said that he had been saddened by the way Henderson had portrayed India. "He is a wonderful writer but he has really disappointed me on this tour. It is people like him that make India seem like a place to be endured, not relished."

Henderson scoffs at accusations of racism. "That's so absurd that the only thing one can do is laugh. I write in a colourful way and I manage to hold down the best cricket job in the world, bar none. Given that canvas, you want brushes of green and blue and red on it. Flaubert said 'constant abrasion produces a pearl' with good reason. There's no point sitting on the fence.

"There are, as you well know, certain bleeding-heart liberals who will take any unkind reference to another country as evidence of racism. But anyone who thinks I'm not critical of my own country can't have read anything I've written."

That much is true. Last summer, an incensed Henderson wrote of Leeds on a Friday night: "it offered a microcosm of a society that had lost its soul. Awash with money, yet ugly beyond belief, our towns represent the landscape of modern England, and things are getting worse". British teenagers were described in the same piece as "the most feckless, the most aggressive, the most stupid in Europe". By comparison, East London in South Africa got away lightly - it was merely "soulless, ghastly, desolate".

Henderson appears to have a genuine affection for India. "It is a remarkable country. You learn something every day and what impresses you is the modesty and gentleness of the people. But of course there are frustrations to touring India - that is part of Indian life and there is no getting away from that. If people don't understand that then they can't have been to India.

He stands behind every word he has written. "I don't think that anyone would deny that Ahmedabad is a very ordinary place. I think Indians themselves would say that. So what? I've been rude about better places than Ahmedabad.

"Ganguly is extremely lucky to be in the side. He's a terrible captain and he has no respect for the game. I don't like his high-handedness, I don't like anybody who puts himself above the game and Ganguly has done that. His attitude towards Steve Waugh was disgraceful. I don't think you'll find too many people in the game with a kind word to say about Ganguly, so if I'm rude about him I'm one of many."

A man who is hyper-sensitive to the rudeness in others is baffled that anyone has found anything that he has written this tour offensive. "I'm not aware of being rude about India or Indians on this tour. I've been rude about certain Indians but that's another matter altogether. I don't think we should lower the bat for the Indians just because they're not English. Some people do that but I don't. I think we should all be treated the same. The trouble with cricket in India is cricket has become too important. It is the one unifying force in the country and it has become almost a national virility symbol."

"A job like mine has got to have some authority and you've got to have an independent voice. I do. I may be provocative sometimes, I may be sympathetic. I have been rude about people, I shall continue to be rude about people. It's the way I write, it might sound facile to say I can write no other way but it is true. I am a man of strong opinions."

A man of strong opinions and thrusting words, a conservative liberal who started off on the Guardian but who now epitomises the Daily Telegraph. A man with a genuine love of cricket, but an unstoppable thirst for controversy. He still has three days of this tour to write about. Don't expect him to pull his punches.

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

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