The two-hour train journey from London to Birmingham provides evidence of the dryness of the English summer. The usually green shrubs that surround the railway tracks all the way to the horizon, have changed into straw coloured farmlands.

The case is somewhat similar in the middle of the Edgbaston cricket ground. The 22-yard strip which will host tomorrow's opening Test of the Pataudi Trophy, was devoid of any grass. The adjacent pitches had an abundance of bare patches.