This wasn't just any ordinary mist but, at times, a good old fashioned pea-souper that enveloped the city until the midwinter sun finally broke through in mid-to-late morning.

One really had to feel sorry for those fans who were expecting a week in the Mumbai sun, having booked up many months ago, and who found themselves shivering in the Hotel Majestic as they sipped hot tea waiting to hear news on the prospects of play.

It was as far as could be removed from the images usually associated with cricket in India - imagine cricket at Headingley, not in April, but in December itself and you get the general picture!

But the fog was just a minor inconvenience compared to the searches conducted by Punjab Police officers of spectators wanting to enter the PCA Stadium to watch the Test.

The authorities in had promised to throw a 'ring of steel' around the stadium and they were as good as their word.

Around half a kilometre from the ground tickets were quickly checked and preliminary frisks, all normal and straightforward, took place.

However, it was at the gates to the ground where things got more 'interesting'.

Imagine if you will - and I'll make this all as polite as possible - four policemen assigned to ensure that each and every spectator is not trying to smuggle anything untoward into the stadium.

Now imagine two of those policeman sitting on chairs, one of whom is to check, very, very thoroughly, that you aren't smuggling anything alongside or underneath what we might call 'the family jewels' and the other whose role is to ensure that you haven't got anything hidden 'round the back' - and meanwhile, the other two more policemen are checking the usual places including a very close examination of your armpits!

Wait, because there's more.

You then turn into the gate itself and there are four more policemen to repeat the process and do an even more thorough and intimate job . It's no exaggeration to say that in parts of the world some people pay good money for a lot less!

On a personal level, however, the draw at Mohali was as good as it got for me.

Having missed England's initial warm-up victory in Mumbai, it was a sorry tale of seven defeats and a draw as I made my way by train across this massive but fantastic country.

It's been a long slog without an England victory to cheer, but as ever in India, other than maybe just one win, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Andrew Strauss's two centuries, Graeme Swann's two wickets in his first Test over and Paul Collingwood's fighting century (does he score any other type?), KP's double failure with the bat, Monty's bowling, Steve Harmison's inability to perform in Tests away from England and the West Indies and whether or not Ian Bell uses hair straighteners were all discussed at length to help pass the time.

No, I'm not making that last subject up - 34 hours is an awfully long time on a train!

At the Chepauk Stadium though it might be a different story with Indian police having reportedly deployed a staggering 5,000 personnel, including 300 armed commandos, at the team hotel and at the stadium.

But once the average England supporter walks away from the ground it is, obviously, a different story and it's down to us, as ever, to use our own judgement on each situation that travelling in India throws up each day.

No England fan I've spoken to has changed their usual lifestyle out here in any way and I'd imagine it will business as usual at the hotels, restaurant and bars in the city over the next week - albeit on a smaller scale than usual.

One thing that will undoubtedly be a source of conversation in those bars and restaurants is whether the Test match atmosphere will differ in anyway from a 'normal' Test match played under 'normal' circumstances.

And whilst I'm sure England's supporters will also have their own theories in why their team chose to return for the Test series, there's no doubt most of those supporters out here will have their own thoughts on the relevance of the cricket being played in front of them.

But whilst the graphic images of bodies sprawled acoss the concourse of Mumbai's main railway station will live with me for a very long time I have to believe that we, the English supporters, are here in India at this time, to cheer England towards a Test series victory.

Taking a simple snap in India still often draws a sizable crowd so you can imagine the interest that was caused by a TV camera pointing at an Englishman slouched on some baggage destined for a faraway location!

My second appearance was far stranger and completely unexpected.

After a knock at my hotel door the night before England's opening game I was about to open up and tell the chai boy I didn't want another cup of his delicious tea when in burst five Rajkot police officers accompanied by a TV crew!

The hotel manager was with them apologising profusely and explained that they were searching all the rooms in the hotel.

I never got to the bottom of what they were searching for but whilst the entire contents of my rucksack were ignored my Dad's 60th birthday card enjoyed specific attention! What viewers would have made of a senior police inspector opening and closing the card to show an elephant playing a shot with a cricket bat goodness only knows!

Whilst the interest, or more importantly lack of, in India's Test series with Australia has been well documented this definitely hasn't been the case in this ODI Series so far.

In both Rajkot and Indore, and now in Kanpur, hotel beds right across the price spectrum have been increasingly tough to come by.

With many of the venues slated for this tour rarely seeing international cricket fans from all over the respective states have flooded to the cities to completely fill hotels that are already very busy coping with the start of India's traditional wedding season.

As the manager of my hotel in Indore succinctly put it: 'I wish the city suffered from cricket fever more often'!

Interest in the games hasn't stopped at the lack of hotel rooms of course.

Both games so far have been complete sell-outs with 32,000 packing into Indore's fantastic Maharani Usharaje Trust Cricket Ground and, supposedly, 18,000 squeezing into Rajkot's slightly less salubrious Madhavrao Scindia Cricket Ground.

Even in an empty ground the view afforded in Rajkot isn't what one would expect from an international cricket venue.

The bamboo canes and ropes used to hold up the temporary awnings combined with the permanent barbed wire topped metal fence make watching the cricket difficult enough.

But when you add a crowd who have cleverly adopted the 'one-person-out, four-people-in' technique during the first session of play to swell the actual attendance way above 20,000 then watching much of the game becomes virtually impossible.

Mind you, when you lose by a whopping 158 runs maybe that's no bad thing!

We all know that Test match cricket is struggling to find a niche in India these days so how's this for an inspired bit of marketing?

Here in Nagpur, daily tickets were not on sale for the Test match and only season tickets at Rs 750 (£10) , Rs 1000 (£13.50) , Rs 6000 (£80) and Rs 10,000 (£134) for all five days were made available.

Obviously that's great if you're able to see the whole game but not really a sound financial decision if you can only make one day.

It sparked such resentment locally that the newspapers on the first morning of the Test carried various pictures of demonstrations at the old VCA Ground.

Of course, as well as ticket prices the location of the new stadium doesn't help to drum up support.

The new VCA Ground isn't just on the edge of town but some 15 kilometres from the centre of Nagpur (although most auto-rickshaw drivers will tell you it's 25km!) so getting to and home from the ground is rarely straightforward.

The Wardha Road linking Nagpur and the stadium has been earmarked as prime development land and in the future the new VCA Ground may not be the relative blot on the landscape it is now.

For the time being though it's either an expensive slog out to the ground by auto-rickshaw or taxi or the usual helter- skelter bus journey packed to the rafters with eager cricket fans keen to make the start of play.

Once you have arrived there is, as always, a decision made by local administrators that makes you scratch your head and smile.

Now I know the ground is brand new and relatively spick and span but surely the decision not to let supporters drink water and eat the food they've purchased at the food stands in their seats is taking things a bit too far!

It did mean though that the quieter passages of play were enlivened by the surreptitious smuggling and consumption of food and water into Gallery S-I by the most unlikely of 'criminals'!

But now it's time to turn away from sparsely populated Test grounds and turn my attention to the packed-to-the-rafters appeal of the seven-match ODI Series against England.

I've got my trains booked for the seven-match, 19-day epic journey all over this immense country and if the pre-series hype is anything to go by I doubt there 'll be a spare seat at any one of the matches.

Back home in England before I set off for India, the thought of a 40 or 50-hour train journey north from Bangalore to watch the second Test against Australia and a week in the Milton Keynes of the Punjab that is Chandigarh had seemed like one trip too far in my cricketing journey.

And so, sat in various hotel rooms and bars around Karnataka, Kerala and Goa, I suffered in self imposed exclusion wondering what I had been thinking of to miss Sachin Tendulkar make history in Mohali.

One very, very tiny positive that came from watching from afar was the chance to sample the TV coverage of the Test and I was soon spellbound by the incredibly swift advertising breaks between each over.

With only a handful of ads being rotated throughout the day's play I'm now completely sure what bank (although I guess some British shareholders wouldn't agree!) to choose, which motorbike to ride, which suit to wear and which widescreen plasma TV to watch my IPL, sorry Test match, cricket on!

More importantly, I now can also confirm, thanks to the epic two minute ad during each drinks break, that Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra IS the most beautiful women on earth!

In between the avalanche of ads there was, of course, quite a decent Test match going on between India and Australia.

Rather naively, I thought that when Sachin finally broke Brian Lara's Test runs record, the feat would be recognised, celebrated and then the match would move on.

How wrong I was! Within minutes of Sachin going past the landmark viewers were showered with a series of Sachin stats and it seemed a host of companies had a 'Congratulations Sachin' adverts up their sleeves ready for blanket coverage from the moment the Little Master broke the record.

If you've never been to India before it really is impossible to describe the sheer depth of feeling and interest there is in Sachin Tendulkar and the affection shown to him over the 19 years of his impeccable Test career.

I can add little to what has already been said around the cricketing world but I do genuinely believe the game of cricket will never see the like of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar again.

And it didn't end with Sachin's record of course.

Having sat through two painful Ashes series defeats in Australia in the past it was, and I'll admit it openly here, nice to see the Aussies brought down a peg or two.

But not even I, or those surreptitious drinkers watching the game with me in a drinking den in Bangalore, could believe what we were seeing on the fourth afternoon as five Australian wickets tumbled in what seemed like about five minutes.

I'd like to think they were sober the following morning when India wrapped up a historic 320-run win and claimed yet another piece of history that I, so foolishly, had missed seeing in the flesh.

Indeed, it looked pretty much business as usual outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium on the first morning of the first Test with the queues for those with tickets, those buying tickets and those collecting tickets all merged into one mighty scrum outside the one narrow entry into one of the main stands.

However inside, the large sections of empty seats told a different story and although the 55,000 capacity venue filled up a little over the course of the day, the organisers said they were "disappointed" with the turnout.

A local holiday ensured that the crowds on Friday and Saturday were more in line with expectation but the most worrying, long-term, change in the paying public's love of the game out here came on the fifth day.

Since I first travelled out here in 1996 the very whiff of a Sachin Tendulkar innings would bring in people far and wide and I'll never forget the scene in Ahmedabad in 2001 when the amassed crowd disappeared like water down a plughole the moment the Little Master was dismissed.

So, with Sachin striding out to bat and Brian Lara's world record run tally very much on the horizon, I fully expected the stands to groan under the weight of Bangaloreans rushing in to see Sachin make history.

Incredibly though, the galleries only swelled very slightly as India looked to save the Test and the only real noticeable difference was in the stand for 'invitees only' - obviously making the most of their Monday afternoon freebie.

But switch on your TV at night and perhaps some of the reasons behind the disappointing crowds come to light.

At 7pm every night you can tune in for the new and improved second edition of the Indian Cricket League, or as the advertisers would have it - CRICKET BOOM BOOM - ICL 2008!

Now there's no doubt that, on paper, the product on display arguably leaves a little bit to be desired with retired internationals mixing it with Indian youngsters but there is no denying the slick coverage and sheer amount of money being pumped in means that the ICL is a force to be reckoned with.

Throw in some scantily-clad cheerleaders/dancing girls, Tony Greig screaming "...off the meat of the bat" at even the most innocuous forward defensive and the beautiful Mayanti Langer flipping effortlessly from English to Hindi as she interrogates each waiting batsman - it makes a heady cocktail for those watching at home.

Comparatively, conditions both inside and outside many Indian Test grounds have seen very little investment over the last few years and now, other than the cricket out in the middle, hardly encourage local cricket fans to part with their hard-earned rupees.

Maybe the attendances in Bangalore were simply a blip or has the grip of Twenty20 taken its first hold on Test cricket?

With New Zealand nine wickets down at lunch on the final day, the match and the series looked done and dusted but when you're watching England you never take anything for granted. Even so, with a 19-year-old debutant batting at number 10 and possibly the world's worst batsman at 11, it's fair to say the majority of England fans spent lunchtime making their plans for the rest of the day.

Of course, it wasn't that simple and although Tim Southee and Chris Martin's partnership never quite reached the nerve-jangling levels of Astle-Morrison (Auckland 1997) or Astle-Cairns (Christchurch 2002), Southee's whirlwind half century did give England fans just the odd 'What if?' moment.

In fact, it's been a whirlwind kind of tour thanks to the short interludes between the Tests and the fact that all three games lasted the full five days.

Busy grounds, tight games and atmospheric surroundings have fully justified the decision to choose 'boutique venues' for this series, and, after winning our first away series since South Africa three years ago, I doubt you'll find many England fans who disagree.

The local papers got it half right when the suggested the Wellington public at this Test had supplied the best atmosphere at a Test match at The Basin Reserve in a number of years.

But whilst the atmosphere was indeed a wonderful mix of olde-world cricket-watching perched on the grassbank and the modern-day Test phenomenon of the post-tea sing-a-long, it wasn't the cricketing public of New Zealand's capital who added to the atmosphere.

Instead it was the 6,000 or so (I reckon) England supporters both from the other side of the world and those now living in the Land of the Long White Cloud who took the new-look England bowling attack to their hearts and cheered on the lads with a fervour not seen or heard in a very long time.

Far better cricketing judges than me can discuss the merits of the England team selection but it was clear from the first ball of New Zealand's reply that the English support was, one and all, right behind Sid, Broady, Jimmy and Monty.

And there's no doubt that that support was certainly appreciated by the English players as Jimmy Anderson's rush to the England supporters on the grass bank when he took his first wicket and Ryan Sidebottom's 180 degree turn to race towards the Army when he trapped Jacob Oram lbw proved.

It may not have been a 'Barmy Army Wicket' as the English supporters chanted but there's no doubt the support Sidebottom received as he charged in put an extra spring in his bowling step and, who knows, helped Rudi Koertzen in his decision to ever-so-slowly raise his finger to send Oram on his way.

If Test cricket is dying in New Zealand then the arrival of the England cricket team in general and The Barmy Army in particular has given Test cricket over here a mild resurrection this series.

With the 'Sold Out' signs being displayed by mid-afternoon on the Saturday it begged the question that its been so long since those signs had to be displayed it's a wonder anyone could lay their hands on them!

Of course, those crowds and the atmosphere they produced were helped immensely by the fantastic weather that has bathed this series in almost continual sunshine since the first day at Hamilton.

The wind that 'Windy Wellington' is infamous for stayed away for most of the Test, meaning that the 20 or so England fans camping on this tour (yours truly included) could breathe a huge sigh of relief that any under-pegged tents wouldn't make an early and very rapid start towards Napier and the deciding Test!

Yeah, England lose plenty of Test matches abroad, and too many to mention in the last couple of winters, but the whole Sunday morning capitulation after we'd witnessed the stirring deeds of Ryan Sidebottom and his band of fantastic catchers in Saturday's post-tea session has made defeat even more difficult to swallow.

But more of that later.

With a relative overcast first day too many visitors took advantage of Seddon Park's seductive yet unshaded grass bank unprotected from a sun that, although seemingly tucked away behind the clouds, can do some serious damage over the course of a day at the cricket to those not following the Kiwi sun mantra.

I've watched cricket in some hot places around the world but although the actual temperature at Seddon Park never got anywhere near 30C the sheer ferocity of the sun on exposed skin felt like it was being sliced open by the sun's rays.

The sunburn to the shins and feet of one supporter (who shall remain nameless!) on that first day were so bad he had to be taken, hobbling, to A&E at a Hamilton hospital to have the burns dressed and then redressed on subsequent days. It has to be said that is no way to start any tour!

As I made the eight-hour journey from Hamilton to Wellington by coach yesterday such was the peeling skin on the arms and faces of some of the England supporters onboard I thought I'd accidently stumbled onto a walk-on addition for The Singing Detective!

Finally I can't finish without a small word of praise for Sidebottom. England hat-tricks don't come along very often (11 in their history) so when they do it's always nice to claim an 'I was there' moment. I was lucky enough to see Darren Gough's hat-trick in Sydney in early 1999 and although the crowd might not have been as big or as boisterous in Hamilton the collective roar when the umpire's finger was slowly raised to send Jacob Oram on his way LBW was as loud a noise as they've heard in these parts for a while!

Backed up by some stupendous catching - take a bow Alistair Cook - our performance on Saturday made Sunday's events even more galling. But we've been here many, many times before with England on tour.

The England fans who got caught out by the sun in Hamilton won't be making the same mistakes again but will Peter Moore's team?

Roll on the Second Test at The Basin Reserve!

Admittedly it doesn't have the romance of trips to the Asian subcontinent, the hype of an Ashes tour or the swaying palm trees of cricket in the Caribbean but tours to this part of the world tend to be closely fought.

Although it will never match an Ashes tour for many English fans, the New Zealand tour is one that many look forward to with great expectation.

Since I arrived late last week, two of the players most likely to liven up proceedings in the Test series have had contrasting fortunes to say the least.

Some six years ago England warmed up for the corresponding Test series at the implausibly beautiful John Davies Oval in Queenstown against an Otago side keen to put one over their international opposition.

A weather-worn local man made sure he told everyone within earshot that the slight 20-year-old opening the batting for the home side had it in him to be 'a bloody world-beater'.

Ever since then I’ve kept a close eye on the rise and rise of Brendon McCullum and, as luck would have it, I had a chance to see the 2008 vintage close up in the State Shield Final in Auckland at the weekend.

The stats of his innings speak for themselves: a majestic 170 off 108 balls, with his ton coming from 52 deliveries (both of which were NZ domestic records) as Otago chased down a seemingly mammoth 310 with eight overs to spare.

It was an awesome display firstly of power hitting followed by controlled aggression that clearly showed the talent that England are well aware of after the ODI series, and which could ignite the Test series given the chance.

While the stock of BMac (a NZ radio jock’s invention - not mine!) rises to new highs the rise and fall of New Zealand cricket's “biggest” newest star couldn't have been more rapid or more publicly played out.

The where and whens of Jesse Ryder's big night out and subsequent hand injury have slowly slipped off the back pages of the New Zealand papers

But now you can't switch on the radio without Iris from Invercargill or Wally from Whangarei letting the wider public know whether Ryder is a “drunken boof” or “misguided genius”.

Whatever you're opinion he's just the type of character New Zealand Cricket is desperately looking out for the put people through the turnstiles at Test matches.

Although we'll never know for sure, the NZ papers seem pretty sure that he would have made the starting XI for the first Test.

Ryder's notoriety was confirmed when I overheard two students ready for the start of term at Auckland University deciding on whether the previous evening's drinking exploits had constituted a “Jesse”, a “half-Jesse” or a “quiet one”!

But while Jesse Ryder is inadvertently adding his name to the Kiwi vocabulary, I for one can't wait for the Test series to spark into life in Hamilton on Wednesday.

After missing the last eight England Tests away from home (England's record - drawn two lost six) since their wonderfully unexpected win in Mumbai almost two years ago it's time for England to return to winning ways in the land of the long white cloud.

I reckon a repeat of the 2-0 win we enjoyed in 1997 is on the cards again, or is that just wishful thinking?

Phil Long has been following England around the world for the last decade and has been writing for BBC Sport for the last six years.

Without any prompting I was offered a staggering 200 crisp American dollars for a ticket which had cost me just 100 rand a few weeks previously.

In other words, £100 for a ticket that had a face value of a little over seven quid - but when India and Pakistan are squaring off in any cricket match, let alone the inaugural World Twenty20 final, then all financial logic seems to go out of the window.

This time, however, the ticketless fans were held back at a police roadblock more than half a mile from the ground with each one (or so it felt) shouting out how much they were prepared to pay to those of us who slipped through the cordon with ticket in hand.

Somehow, large numbers of supporters from both sides had slipped through that cordon and the desperation, along with the ridiculous amount of cash being offered, increased to dizzying heights as the turnstiles approached.

If anyone had any doubt to as how the tournament has been embraced over here, they only needed to look at the truly awesome spectacle of thousands upon thousands of Indian and Pakistani flags being waved all round The Wanderers.

Not only that but the, and let's be generous here, 'banter', being exchanged by both sets of fans meant that the Bullring was at boiling point way before the teams came out to contest the final.

That excitement was ramped up by each set of fans as wickets tumbled and sixes were hit high and hard into the crowd.

Hats off to the tournament organisers for toning down the inter-over music and let the crowd create a unique atmosphere all of their own.

Well, at least I think they turned the tunes down or perhaps they were drowned out by the crowd.

Just when it appeared things couldn't get much more manic the sighting of Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan in one of the corporate boxes high in the heavens cranked the atmosphere up another notch.

The crowning glory of this fantastic tournament has to be that the final itself went to the final over.

When Misbah-ul-Haq sank to his knees after flipping his attempted match-winning shot straight into the hands of Sree Santh the Indian fans went suitably crazy with joy.

I'd been so wrapped up in the unforgettable atmosphere and tension of the afternoon it wasn't until later on I remembered the £100 I turned down for my ticket.

But I wouldn't have parted with my ticket for anything to have missed being part of a fantastic finale to a truly memorable tournament.

The thing with anything as extraordinary as England's 19th over in Wednesday's Twenty20 match against India is that is impossible to see that moment approaching and even harder to digest as it is taking place.

But even so, with the score at 171-3 off 18 overs and Stuart Broad coming on to bowl his final over to Yuvraj Singh, there was no real indication of the five minutes of carnage that was about to unfold both on and off the pitch.

As early as the second ball of the over, events could have taken a dramatic and potentially tragic turn.

With the ball dumped way into the crowd, one of the industrial strength fireworks, launched from the top of the scoreboard each time a maximum is scored, malfunctioned, and fizzed, fully ignited directly over the heads of the packed stand and into the Kingsmead turf!

By the end of the over we didn't need to worry about incoming fireworks as the pyrotechnics out on the pitch meant the supply on top of the scoreboard had also been long since exhausted!

Also looking exhausted were the four dancers in front of me whose particularly energetic routine everytime 'Whoops, Where's a Six? Whoops, There it is!' blasted out of the massive PA speakers was starting to flag and become less enthusiastic by the end of the over!

By the time Broady came running for the sixth and, potentially history-making, delivery the 16,000 or so inside Kingsmead were in a state of frenzied anticipation that I've rarely seen in all my cricket travels around the globe.

And I'm not afraid to admit, and this might upset a few Englishmen out there, that a little part of me wanted Yuvraj to clear the boundary for a sixth time and create history.

We all know now that that sixth ball did indeed fly into the stand to send the little man who seems to be measuring every six in this tournament scurrying into the crowd to compute Yuvray's total 'yardage' for the over!

Better judges than me will have their say on each of the sixes and what Broad and Yuvraj did or didn't do and should or shouldn't have done but as pure sporting theatre goes it truly could not have been bettered.

After that unbelievable and truly unforgettable over anything other than a stunning England victory meant the rest of the game could have been a slight anti-climax.

However, the packed crowd stayed spellbound by England's gallant yet ultimately unsuccessful run-chase right to the end, savouring a night, or more importantly, an over, to remember.