In simpler times, overseas VIPs arriving in India would be greeted with a garland of marigolds and a dab of vermillion to the forehead. Today each England player can expect to step off the plane in Madras (Chennai) into the embrace of their personally assigned, heavily armed Indian Army commando. Welcome to the new era of high-security cricket.

Madras, which was heavily overcast yesterday, with the temperature at 28C (82F) combined with 70 per cent humidity, is never an easy place to play, but it is probably one of the subcontinent’s safer locations. The city has had its share of terrorism – in 1991 Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated near by – but in recent months it has escaped the bomb blasts that have ripped through Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. The surrounding state of Tamil Nadu, much of it rice paddy and coconut groves, is one of those least blighted by extremism.

Nevertheless, the Indian authorities, under enormous pressure from a furious public to improve security after the Mumbai attacks, will take no chances with the England squad. After all, we are a long way from the days when the greatest threat to a player’s wellbeing was posed by a duff mutton tikka or an ill-judged ice cube in that victory gin and tonic.

Moreover, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the sport’s global financial powerhouse, knows that all the razzmatazz of the Indian Premier League will count for nought if the country is eschewed by tourists because of a dire security situation.

And so, from Madras airport – which was crawling with troops at the weekend after the receipt of “credible intelligence” of a 9/11-type plot to hijack an airliner – England will probably travel by coach, to the Taj Coromandel Hotel. En route, through Madras’s notoriously congested streets, the authorities will roll out “a heavy bandobust”. That translates to as many police as the city can muster – a reassuring sight, even if most will be armed with little more than sticks and decades-old Lee Enfield-style bolt-action rifles.

Once at the hotel – a sister establishment to the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai – the players are expected to be assigned a heavily guarded floor. They will be asked to restrict their movements outside until they head for the 50,000-capacity M. A. Chidambaram Stadium, considered one of India’s sturdier venues. At the ground the team will prepare in a dressing-room enveloped by an unprecedented security cordon.

Access to sensitive locations, such as the players’ viewing areas, will be “centrally controlled”, the authorities say. That probably means that smiling broadly and walking purposefully – a surprisingly successful tactic in all manner of Indian venues – is unlikely to get interlopers through.

Then the real security headache will begin. Assuming that the Madras Test passes without incident, the England team appear likely to head to Mohali, a relatively remote suburb of Chandigarh, to play the second Test. Set in the Punjab, where there have been a number of terrorist atrocities over the years, it is only a few hours’ drive from Pakistan.