Touring abroad is not a bed of roses

"There's nothing more miserable than the experience of touring with the Indian cricket team as a reserve player," the late P Krishnamurti, former Indian wicket keeper used to say, referring to how lonesome you could feel if you were not a regular in the eleven. Things have quite possibly changed for the better since the 1970s in this regard, with the advent of professionalism and more thoughtful handling of the psychological needs of players, but touring abroad is not the bed of roses some of us might believe it to be.

The major factor against Indian cricket teams performing as well away as they do at home, as we all know, is the kind of pitches they encounter abroad. They are faster and bouncier, and often aid lateral movement much more than Indian wickets do. They also do not aid spin, taking the sting out of our slow bowlers' wares.

Many of our greatest batsmen in domestic cricket have been found inadequate on sporting wickets abroad. Some of them have been found deficient in courage - Bishan Bedi and EAS Prasanna recently recalled with much wicked glee how a couple of these `flat track bullies' developed a rare form of stomach disorder after one look at the Perth wicket one bright morning in 1977.

The weather often poses a serious problem to the touring Indian. Fingers numbed by icy cold winds render both spin bowling and fielding a painfully challenging proposition. Heavy, overcast conditions can disconcert our batsmen with the ball wobbling and swerving uncomfortably. In recent years, such conditions have also helped India's medium pace bowlers, who have learnt to use them to their advantage.

Food is probably no longer a matter for concern, with Indian players increasingly at home with Western food and much more diet conscious than their predecessors. Some of them, especially the rare vegetarians among them, could still miss tasty home cooking, but overseas Indian cricket enthusiasts are ever willing to go to great lengths of trouble to provide our players with gastronomic delights. In fact, the Indian team management has to exercise great tact and diplomacy while trying to prevent these social obligations from interfering with the cricket responsibilities of the team. A case in point is the ongoing Zimbabwe tour, in which the local hospitality has been overwhelming.

Touring Indian teams suffer from a shortage of practice bowlers, something visitors to the subcontinent will seldom encounter. Invariably, the host team gets to practise at the more convenient hour or at the match ground or even out in the middle, while the tourists are relegated to second priority. To their credit, our cricketers brush aside these slings and arrows of outrageous double standards, rarely griping or grumbling. Like the true sportsmen they are, they refrain from inventing horror stories about their tours, something their counterparts from the developed world do with impunity.

In recent years, the more experienced Indian cricketers have begun to look relatively comfortable in alien surroundings. Real proof of that will be provided by success on the forthcoming tours of Sri Lanka and South Africa..