CRICKET/India v England: After two weeks of skating round the fringes, the England tour of India yesterday lurched from turmoil into a disarray that is almost comical in its seriousness. Bad news has been a constant companion since first they landed, and it has not yet taken its leave.

That the captain Michael Vaughan is to return home has not come as a total surprise because he suffered discomfort in his troublesome right knee during the first warm-up match in Mumbai. The injury to Simon Jones yesterday, though, has come as a hammer blow.

The pace bowler pulled up limping in his delivery stride while practising and immediately sank to the ground, in pain from his left knee. He was able to walk unaided, if gingerly, to the dressingroom and was sent for a scan. He cut a forlorn figure when he returned to the team hotel, knee heavily strapped.

This means that Andrew Flintoff will take over the captaincy at a time when the last thing almost everyone but he thinks he needs is an extra workload. It also means that there will be a debut for the talented young Essex left-hander Alastair Cook, who will accompany Andrew Strauss at the top of the order. Cook is a fine young player, apparently with all the credentials technically and mentally to enjoy a successful Test career; the door may be opening for him just as a previous injury to Vaughan and then the retirement of Nasser Hussain allowed in Strauss.

But the loss of the captain and the man who might have proved to be the key bowler in England's attack surely means that any hopes England might have entertained about stretching India on one of their own custom-built surfaces have vanished. Cricket has produced enough miracles for nothing to be ruled out. The reality, however, is that the first Test will be all about survival and making it to Mohali for the second with record intact and a few bodies on the mend.

This promises to be an inhospitable match for those charged with the task of bowling to the finest batting line-up India can have mustered, in conditions that would test to the full anyone but spinners of the highest class. It will be hot, searingly so even by the standards of the subcontinent at this time of year as it cranks up into summer.

Last Thursday the temperature reached 39.7C (103F), the hottest February day for 119 years, and it has not relented significantly since.

Surely only complacency can prevent India from gaining the upper hand in the series here. Their batting is formidable, but England's pacemen have shown they can get among the best even in hostile conditions. The suggestion is that India will want to play five bowlers, which means the left-arm paceman Irfan Pathan batting at seven and the pyrotechnic sensation Mahendra Singh Dhoni at six. If they lose the toss and are made to field first then such a strategy might, just might, prove an undoing. If India bat first, however, they may be unstoppable.

Flintoff may prove an admirable, indeed inspirational leader, but it may come to nought if he calls wrong.