David Cameron with Kapil Dev in New Delhi on Thursday. (AP)

New Delhi, July 29: British Prime Minister David Cameron hit Kapil Dev for a tennis-ball six, Pakistan for another hard-ball six and generally acquitted himself well by telling the hosts what they wanted to hear.

Almost on all “issues”, except the Kohinoor.

Even if the Tory Cameron’s jabs at Pakistan from Indian soil have upset Islamabad and some Labour leaders, the general agreement after his tour of India was that the youngest British Prime Minister in nearly two centuries had revealed a plain-speaking streak. An unsettled question was whether it was down to youthful inexperience — he is 43-plus — or a bold new approach to diplomacy.

Cameron offended Islamabad —and delighted Delhi — when he suggested on Wednesday that Pakistan “promoted the export of terror”.

Cameron not only did not go back on the statement today but built on it, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by his side this evening.

Told that an angry Pakistan had attributed his comments to his “inexperience”, Cameron said he believed in talking “frankly, clearly and openly”.

“The Pakistan government needs to crack down and eliminate terror groups, whether LeT, Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban. Pakistan has taken some steps but it needs to do more, so that we can reduce and eliminate the threat of terrorism, whether here in India, Pakistan or Afghanistan or in the streets of London,” he said. “It is not acceptable, as I have said, for there to be within Pakistan the existence of terror groups that cause terrorism within Pakistan, outside Pakistan, in Afghanistan, India and elsewhere in the world.”

On his way to India, Cameron had already stirred anger in Israel by saying in Turkey that Gaza was a “prison camp”.

While in Ankara, Cameron had also dismissed opponents of Turkish membership of the European Union as “protectionist, polarised or prejudiced”, an analysis that will not be shared in Paris or Berlin. France and Germany oppose Turkish entry.

“I think it’s important, as I say, to speak frankly about these things to countries that are your friends,” Cameron said on Thursday in an interview with British broadcasters in New Delhi, adding that he would “do so in the future” too.

He kept his word and was “frank” on the Kohinoor as well. Asked on NDTV if India could hope to get back the diamond, Cameron, who took over in May, said: “That is a question I have never been asked before.... What tends to happen with these questions is that if you say ‘yes’ to one, then you would suddenly find the British museum empty and I know there is a great argument about the original provenance of the Kohinoor diamonds. I am afraid to say it’s going to stay where it’s put.”

If Indians are resigned to the Kohinoor not returning in a hurry, Pakistan did not take kindly to the remarks on terror. Pakistan’s high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said in a column in the Guardian newspaper that Cameron had “damaged the prospects of regional peace”. “He is new in government. Maybe he will learn soon and know how to handle things,” Hasan later told the BBC.

David Miliband, who was foreign minister under the previous Labour government, jumped at the opportunity to attack Cameron. “I think there’s a big difference between straight-talking and being a loudmouth,” he told BBC radio. “It’s very, very important that the Prime Minister... understands we have got two ears and one mouth and it's very important to use them in that proportion.”

In a way, Cameron was trying to remove a thorn in the side of India-Britain relations during the Labour years when Pakistan took primacy for London because of the war on terror. That, unlike his Labour predecessor Gordon Brown, Cameron had chosen to visit India instead of China registered with his Indian hosts.

Cameron, who flew back tonight, will get a direct response from Pakistan when he hosts President Asif Ali Zardari at his Chequers country residence in Britain next week.

But today a childhood dream, not Zardari, was on Cameron’s mind. Cameron fulfilled the self-confessed “childhood dream” of hitting Kapil Dev for a six when the two faced off at a Commonwealth stadium in Delhi. The Prime Minister was gracious enough to point out that they had played with a tennis ball.

On most other topics, Cameron played to the gallery. He said the UK had no plans to mediate on Kashmir, described Delhi’s National Stadium, refurbished for the Commonwealth Games, as world class, promised India a say in the UK’s immigration policy, lauded India’s growth and did not even for once mention the grinding poverty that millions in India live in.

Cameron secured an order for British Aerospace to supply 57 Hawks to India, and a commitment to double bilateral trade in the next five years and establish a new India-UK CEOs Forum co-chaired by Peter Sands (CEO of Standard Chartered Bank) and Ratan Tata.

Tagore also found mention. “Both sides welcomed plans by the concerned Indian agencies for the manifestation of the year-long celebration in the UK of Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary, commencing in May 2011,” stated a joint declaration.

One disappointment: Cameron could not meet Sonia Gandhi or Rahul. The meeting scheduled between Cameron and Sonia was cancelled as mother and son were “unavoidably out of town for a compelling reason”.