Jimmy Anderson irresistible as England take India by the scruff

Jimmy Anderson, with a dodgy haircut, in 2004. Due to the BCCI's restrictions on agency photographers at the current series

India are in trouble. England already know that they can have this game by the scruff. A lost toss proved no barrier to the bowlers who responded magnificently. We have, of course, seen that before, only for the batsmen to squander the advantage like profligates taking the Christmas club money from the tea caddy on the kitchen shelf and blowing the lot on a wheezy nag.

This, by contrast, was a poor India batting display, England held up only by Gautam Gambhir and Sachin Tendulkar, who before he was wheedled out by Jimmy Anderson for the umpteenth time, grafted out a scratchy innings that for the most part resembled an old fellow looking for the specs he was sure he had left around but couldn't remember where he had put, only to finally discover them perched on top of his head.

This pitch is no sinecure for batsmen but neither is it one on which seven wickets should fall on the first day. Column inches have been filled with tales of subterfuge in its preparation. But beforehand, Prabhir Mukherjee, the 83-year-old groundsman, in the course of a run-in with MS Dhoni regarding the ethics of doctoring pitches to order, promised a surface with pace and bounce.

For most of the day, he sat on the boundary edge, chortling away at pace that would make a snail seem turbo-charged, while there is more bounce to be found in a bag of cement. It is, though, perfectly possible for a diligent batsman, with an appropriate gameplan, to flourish.

There was indeed help for the seamers, as Dhoni suggested there might be, but it was no more than a little new ball swing early on, and some darting reverse swing for Anderson in particular, neither of which had anything to do with the pitch beyond its abrasive nature. Whether there is turn later remains to be seen: it would be a surprise if there was not, just as it would be were there no uneven bounce for the pacemen to exploit. For now, England would settle for conditions to continue their benign fashion.

Too much was made of the early start to play – nine o'clock – with the implication that conditions would favour pacemen for the first hour as a result. A straightforward geography lesson might have helped here. Kolkata is 1,033 miles east of Mumbai and a little farther north. But the whole country runs to Indian Standard Time. For the first day of this third Test, sunrise in Kolkata was at 6.03am, so play actually began two hours and 57 minutes later. Sunrise in Mumbai on the other hand was at 6.58am. A 9.30am start in Mumbai would come only two hours and 32 minutes later. In other words, a start in Mumbai would be, in relative terms, 25 minutes earlier, despite being half an hour later on the clock. I don't recall anyone commenting on the potential for seamers of an early start to the second Test.

Once Anderson found some reverse swing, he was irresistible, a different bowler. The contrast is extraordinary. When there is no lateral movement, his natural length, on the full side as he searches for swing, becomes drivable. He can appear toothless. But when the ball reverses, there is no one in the world, with the exception of Zaheer Khan (who may yet prove a thorn in England flesh) who can equal him. It is his capacity to make it go both ways, rather than the inswing that is generally all that less skilled manipulators can produce, that is the real danger. On days such as this, the ball is at his command.

Meanwhile, the stature of Monty Panesar continues to grow. He is a more accomplished bowler than the callow enthusiast that first bowled in India half a dozen years ago. Essentially though, his game has not changed. He does not "push the ball through" as some would have it, but bowls at the pace, quicker than most, he was brought up with. He understands that Derek Underwood, the most prolific wicket taker of all overseas bowlers in India, did not get his 54 wickets by throwing the ball up like Bishan Bedi.

As a rule, the faster he can bowl while still getting the revs on the ball that give him drift, dip and turn, the better. He has never really revealed how irked he was by Shane Warne's pejorative comment about him playing the same Test over and over again, but he might like to point out that in his seventh match in India he has 24 wickets at 37 apiece, an average rapidly plummeting, against Warne's 34 from nine games, at 43