Forest of flags wave farewell to the Tebbitt Test

Shortly after 12.45pm Mahela Jayawardene gives up circumspection as a bad job. He takes a long stride down the pitch and drives Anil Kumble high towards long-off. The packed crowd in the Hollies Stand begins to rise as the ball arcs through the air. Ashish Nehra takes it safely and thousands jump and shout.

Flags wave, a cacophony of horns blares out, and the beat of the drums gets faster. The din subsides only slowly. The flags are Indian flags, but the crowd dresses like an English crowd and lives in English cities and towns. To find any Indians, immigrants or first generation Indian-English who would pass the Tebbitt Test would be like finding a Thatcherite in, let's say, a theatre company.

The Indians on the field clearly find the enthusiasm catching. They have already fielded more alertly than last weekend at Lord's. Now they run towards the boundary to slap hands with Nehra. It is 125 for 3 and India have cracked the spine of a batting line-up whose confidence is perishing fast. They prepare to assert their superiority.

The crowd is the most interesting feature of the day at Edgbaston. It is full to capacity and the demographics are the sort the England and Wales Cricket Board drool over: predominantly young with a generous sprinkling of pretty women, mothers with young children, and the odd granny. The few elderly spectators are the only ones wearing Indian clothing – apart, that is, from a rather gaunt Englishman who is wearing a Nehru jacket. As for colourful saris, there is only one to be seen.

This is not a teetotal audience, but there were only a handful at the mobile Guinness bar, even fewer at the Bollinger tent. Some middle-aged Indian men were cheerful enough after a few pints of lager but they weren't louts. The wild enthusiasm was not fuelled by drink, as it is when England play at Edgbaston.

The Indian journalists think the English-Indian cricket crowd is noisier than it is at home – as if they have come to assert their separate identity. So they have. They even performed their first Mexican wave at 11.35am, surely an English record. It was rather more difficult for the Sri Lankans to make their presence felt, though it was possible to notice small clusters of them when they, in turn, rose to celebrate Virender Sehwag's dismissal off the first ball of the Indian innings.

It is abundantly clear that a Test between India and Pakistan played here would sell out for five days. The danger is that communal rioting might break out outside the ground among the milling crowd who did not have tickets to get in. When the ECB assesses a good day for cricket in England, they should, none the less, give themselves only mixed notices.

They were right not to enforce the mean-minded "no flags" rule that is always imposed at Lord's where they confiscated a record number of flags a weekend ago. To have done so yesterday would have been – to adopt one of their favourite words – "unhelpful". But they get no marks for putting on their version of the Three Tenors during the lunch interval. The performers were two tenors and a soprano singing popular pieces from 19th-century Italian repertory. But not during India v Sri Lanka at Edgbaston, surely?

And the cricket? It demonstrated that Sachin Tendulkar is no less adored in England than in India. He is cheered every time he gathers the ball at third man. When he comes on to bowl the noise level rises. And when he walks out to bat he gets a standing ovation. Already. But he is a god after all. Incidentally, he wore red socks. What can this portend?