Wednesday, December 5, 2001 Not all famous Englishmen in India wear whites or a crooked grin. Mark Tully wears history. His smoky syrup-of-figs tones were India for the years when there was just one television channel and a government-owned radio station, and people tuned in to the BBC for their news. In Bombay taxi drivers boast of taking him in their cab, and on trains he is stopped by strangers who want to know what Mr Mark Tully thinks of what is happening in Afghanistan.

He is brown like a stick of hazel. His 66-year-old fingers are surprising for a writer - stubby and dotted with sunspots - but his eyes give the game away. Brown, inquisitive, laughing, framed by wild grey eyebrows and a hawkish face a bit like Jonathan Pryce's. Dishevelled in a suit, he watches, with his partner Gillian, from the British Ambassador's box in the Mohali pavilion as Kumble, Harbhajan and the night close in on England in a cocoon of noise.

It is heaven for Tully who, though he hated playing cricket at school, fell for Bishan Bedi and likes nothing better than watching spinners. He has a soft spot for county cricket, especially the smaller grounds like Cheltenham, but thinks there is something special about watching cricket in India.

"It is the crowd, the enthusiasm, the energy. They truly love cricket here. One of my most exciting days was when India won the World Cup. I watched on my television set and we all went and danced in the streets of old Delhi afterwards.

"I think India lends itself very much to street cricket on parks and roads. Especially whenever there is a tour going on, like this, everywhere you go there are people playing cricket. It is one of the better legacies of the British Raj, and it is very much part of their national pride, because it is almost the only game in which they are in a big way good at. They're nowhere in football - they haven't got into the World Cup again this year. In tennis they have one or two good players, in golf they have some good up-and-coming players, but the real game where they have world status is cricket."

He says "their" national pride, not "our", but Mark Tully is a hybrid. He supports India against England, and was born and lived in Calcutta till he was nine and then on and off in Delhi for 30 years. But, he says, "I will never get rid of, nor would I want to get rid of, my Englishness."

He goes back frequently but has no plans to return for good. "Sometimes I think it would be nice to buy a cottage in Scotland and sit by the fire and become the pub bore, but I would miss India immensely."

Officially Mr BBC no more, he does a lot of work for them - a regular religious programme on Radio 4 on Sunday mornings, other features and a bit of television. The life of a freelance suits him.

"It is much better because I am my own man. In a funny way being a foreign correspondent is a narrow experience, you do short stories, cover elections, politics, disasters. I can now return to my original passion - theology - which is a great joy to me.

"One of the things I really love now is that in the evenings I can sit down with two bottles of beer and no-one is going to phone me up and ask me to do a story or anything like that."

He won't write about cricket - "I wouldn't dare" - but is planning a follow-up to his No Full Stops in India (one of the most evocative book titles in the English language). India in Slow Motion is out in England next September. Whether England will want to relive this tour in slow motion then is something else.

Tanya Aldred, our assistant editor, is covering the whole of England's Indian tour for Wisden.com.

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