The headline in last the Hindustan Times reads "India on top of its Games" and spans two major stories - the second Test victory over Australia, and the latest Games medal gain which has taken India to within four medals of its target of 100.

The magical effectiveness of Sachin Tendulkar, who has scored 1,270 Test runs this year at an average of 97.69, is an infallible source of pride and joy for his nation.

Yet, three weeks ago, these Commonwealth Games seemed likely to provide India with little other than embarrassment.

Every major Games approaches its starting point with doubts and questions. Will the venues be finished on time? Will they be empty? Will the transport system hold up? Will security work well enough to ensure safety without tipping over into an obtrusive process which ruins the atmosphere of what should be a sporting celebration?

The period when the world's media have arrived and settled in an international event without having any sporting activity to divert them is traditionally the one in which criticism is at its most searching.

The criticisms poured out on Delhi as the chairman of the Organising Committee, Suresh Kalmadi - whose stewardship of a process teetering on the brink of chaos veered between the comic and the tragic – came face-to-face with the reality he appeared to have spent many months attempting to deny.

The Athletes' Village wasn't clean. Transport was fragmented and uncoordinated. The pedestrian bridge to the main stadium collapsed, badly injuring a number of workers. The timing equipment at the swimming venue was not established.

Preparations everywhere had been hindered still further by monsoons that had continued for longer than normal, and standing water alongside the Athletes' Village offered a breeding ground for mosquitos and a daytime threat of Dengue fever.

Officials with no working role at the Games were being offered transport and accommodation and prime tickets. There were reports that half of the 22,000 volunteers had taken their uniforms and walked, disillusioned. And on it went...

The only element that seemed to be firmly in place was that of security, as more than 100,000 soldiers and commandos policed every major hotel, checkpoint and Games venue in the face of terrorist threats. Something of a double-edge sword this, in PR terms.

As teams, and individual athletes wavered – and several individual athletes took independent decisions not to compete – it looked as if the Games actually might not go ahead in any coherent form, although there could never have been any question of them being halted given the investment of time and money and people that had already been put into them.



As the criticism grew harsher, the organising committee was forced to form an uneasy working partnership with officials from the Commonwealth Games Federation in order to salvage the whole enterprise.

But an event that spent months gathering increasingly bad publicity for a host of valid reasons has gradually emerged with increasing credit as problems with transport, information systems and ticketing have been belatedly but energetically addressed.

Woeful pictures of empty venues have been replaced by shots of seats which, if not always packed, contained significant numbers of genuinely appreciative spectators – or, when the Indian medals started to arrive – genuinely frantic spectators.

That process began with one of the oldest, but still one of the best, tricks in the book - namely the bussing in of youngsters for free. If anyone were in doubt about the nature of some of the early crowds, the fact that significant proportions were in matching red or yellow t-shirts offered confirmation.

But, nudged by CGF officials, and belaboured by the international and local press, the organising committee stirred into sensible activity, and ticket booths on the roads close to venues were clearly open for longer, and clearly allowing people to queue and then buy tickets. A startlingly simple idea, you might have thought.

At the centrepiece of the Games, the Jawharlal Nehru stadium, the atmosphere grew exponentially as Indian track and field athletes began to win medals, and then – for the first time since 1958 in Commonwealth Games track and field – gold medals.

I watched the women's 4x400m final on the final day of athletics amid a mass of people who were not officials, nor enthusiastic schoolchildren on a day out, but a pretty typical mix of sports followers.

As the last Indian runner brought the baton home in first place, people around me were leaping up and down, frantic with anticipation and then gratification.

There is no mistaking the sound of a proper sports audience reacting to a proper sporting event, and that sound was heard with increasing frequency as that great saving grace of any sporting gathering – sport – commanded attention.

In the end, India have something to celebrate – not least second place in the medal table behind Australia, and above England, with the target of 100 medals achieved.

The President of the CGF, Mike Fennell (pictured), was asked to address the question of whether the media should be blamed for exposing problems, or whether that process helped.

Fennell's answer was equivocal.

"Both," he said. "I felt the trivia received more attention than it should but it was important to expose some of the fundamental issues and it helped when those were exposed in the media.

"It helped us to get action going in certain areas, and I say that very sincerely. But I would be less than frank if I said some of the minor reports did not help because the public does not understand the dynamics of organisation."

Speaking at the final Commonwealth Games England presentation, the organisation's president Kelly Holmes had her own take on the dynamics of organisation.

"I think the Indian organisers will have learned a lot of valuable lessons from putting on these Games," she said. "The turnaround they have managed here is amazing. When something hasn't been right they have changed it at the click of their fingers.

"I think the problem Delhi had was mainly in its timing - they ran out of time, and weren't able to get the operational things right at the start as they would have liked to. As we have gone on that has changed.

"If we had started a week earlier I think everyone would have said these were the best Commonwealth Games there have been.

"I think it has emphasised that hosting a Games is a massive undertaking, and that the organising committee, and separate federations and the Government all have to work together. If they don't, that's when you get issues.

"I think these Games have elevated India to believe they can host other big events in future."

And that, of course, is the big question which remains as Delhi prepares for a closing ceremony to a Games that has changed in its nature more than any other I can recall attending in the last 25 years.

The 13th Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh began in a very poor atmosphere, with many African nations boycotting the event, and some even pulling out their teams as they prepared for the opening ceremony itself.

Edinburgh rallied, but it never soared in the way these Games have.

Kalmadi's statements about India wanting the 2020 Olympics appeared absurd a fortnight ago. But it is a measure of how far these Games have come that such a suggestion now merits some serious thought.

In truth, 2020 still seems an ambition too far. But if the rate of progress witnessed in Delhi during the last couple of weeks can persist, then that grand ambition may yet be realised, if not at the first time of asking, then maybe at the second or third.

The 19th Commonwealth Games looked likely to mark the beginning of the end of India's ambitions to host an Olympics. But they could yet turn out to be the end of the beginning.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. New Delhi was the sixth Commonwealth Games he has covered, having attended his first at Edinburgh in 1986