Kumble routed England in Mohali

A ploy adopted by those staying in the Jullunder Hotel was reasonably successful.

Somehow they managed to convince the room service staff that room 104 was outside the jurisdiction of the law and happily consumed beers in their room until the wee small hours.

Unfortunately for them, however, their TV would only show one channel, the local station showing a ball-by-ball replay of the final, depressing, day's play we had just witnessed.

Headache

Various other groups of fans managed to get around the dry day by either staying out of town near the ground in Mohali or taking up the offer from one or two of Chandigarh's unscrupulous restaurant owners to sample their super strength beer.

Presumably using the opportunity to make a few more rupees out of the travelling England fans they served up extra large bottles of SuperCharger and Thunderbolt beer, both of which result in the type of hangover your mother always warned you about.

Whose round is it anyway?

Many of those waiting for the start of play in Ahmedabad on Tuesday were still complaining of the after-effects some four days later!

The darkest tales, however, came from three guys who'd arrived after a night spent in the Chandigarh police cells.

Unluckily for Geoff, Christian and Ray - a tour guide working in Munich, an internet millionaire and a globetrotter extraordinaire - they had chosen the one bar that had been raided by Chandigarh police in search of illicit drinking dens.

Any doubts about the truth of the story were soon scotched by a front page picture in the local Hindi newspaper, presumably snapped by Chandigarh's only member of the paparazzi, of the unlucky trio being led out of the bar by police.

Following interrogation, they signed statements indicating that although they had the beer in front of them they were unaware that it was alcohol and had been served it against their will.

Special permits

After over four hours of questioning they were released from custody around 4.00am into a pitch-black and freezing Chandigarh morning, miles from their hotel.

Spirits are high - if very hard to obtain

And so to Ahmedabad where England's fans, undaunted by the disaster of Chandigarh both in terms of cricket and beer consumption, have followed official means in order to get a drink during the second Test match.

As a 'dry' city in the 'dry' state of Gujarat, the only way of being served with alcohol is to have one's passport stamped with a permit that lists the bearer as a 'confirmed alcoholic'.

With your passport stamped you are then able to purchase 10 alcoholic units of either beer or spirits in the city's five-star hotels.

Not only does this give many of the Barmy Army an opportunity to have a quiet beer after a hectic day in the cheap seats at the Test match but also to see how the other half live.

The Cama Hotel, one of the hotels where the permits are issued, costs approximately the same for one night's stay as the amount spent on accommodation for the whole tour of many of England's travelling fans of alcoholics, illicit drinkers and criminals!