the dirt in Chepauk is orange. The pitch is big orange rectangle. When the batsmen fan it with their bats the dust that is roused up in explosive puffs turns the air orange. Even the colour of the grass, though utterly green, holds something of the value orange bears.

It is made this way by the hot wind that howls over the ground – a blown dry heat paints in orange on the Indian flag. The Indian players standing around with the word sahara emblazoned over their shirts makes the heat palpable.

Harbhajan was unplayable. The bounce he was extracting from the orange pitch was monstruous, vampiric. Every batsmen fell to an edge coming high off the shoulder of the bat or their gloves. Yet it was Kumble that got the body of the wkts. His length was impeccable. He was eminently playable and the batsmen, unable to play at the other end, were keen to try and join with his line. Kumble bowls with perfection. Precision execution of persistent science. His wkts are somewhat expected. Harbhajan is different, he exuberantly feels every wkt fill & burst his soul. On taking the wkt he enters a wild zone akin to the transformative moment dizzy gillespie experiences on dismissing the english – changing into a stalliongull, tossing his head around. I’d face Brett Lee before Harbhajan any day.

In the field, Katich’s white’s have turned orange.