Under My Sun

Man's love for his wife may be hard to define in non-cricketing nations. In most of the Commonwealth, however, it's easier. Love for the wife is a feeling an Englishman gets just before a tour of India. That's the reason why Alec Stewart, Andrew Caddick and Robert Croft didn't tour this country the last time the English visited, though they also included general family values in their press statements. There are other international cricketers who get injured when the India tour is announced. That's why Shane Bond and Chris Cairns are not in India with the rest of the New Zealand team. While genuine injuries and sudden conjugal love do visit men, it's a mystery why the tour of India has a history of causing such afflictions among visiting teams. It cannot be a coincidence that India is also the toughest tour in the world. "The final frontier," as Steve Waugh called it.

The sun here sucks out body fluids. In 1986, during the first Test in the series against Australia, the Chennai sun, which is always on the Indian side, made sure Dean Jones threw up a few times on the pitch. After a valiant century, he walked down the 22 yards to captain Allan Border and asked him if he could go back to the dressing room. Border told the Victorian that if he could not handle the situation, he would get someone tougher from New South Wales to do the job. Jones stayed on to make 210 and was rushed to an icu straight from Chepauk.

The heat is just one of the Indian eleven. There is dust that is well beyond permissible levels in first world countries. And then there is the deathly noise of the unique Indian crowds during a one-day match. Before Stephen Fleming's team landed in India, they trained seven hours every day in Brisbane under what coach Ashley Ross calls "simulated conditions". The batsmen wore earphones that played sounds similar to the great Indian cricket noise, and worked towards using better eye contact with their partners to run between the wickets. No matter how experienced, most foreign cricketers are constantly shocked by the size of the crowds in India. The Eden Gardens can hold one third of the population of Fleming's hometown, Christchurch. All the people in an average Caribbean island can fit into medium-sized cricket grounds like Wankhede in Mumbai.

It's in the middle of such adversity that visiting fast bowlers struggle to bounce the ball even to heights where abdomen guards could be tested. Manhood is safest in India. In most grounds only bad length or criminal conduct can raise the ball any higher. On the other hand, Indian spinners would wait patiently for the pacers to take the shine off and then seemingly tear physics apart. Kumble, a lollypop medium-pacer in other countries, would appear to be holding a grenade.

The challenge of surviving India off the cricket field was severe till a decade ago. There was this fear of 'Delhi belly', poor travel conditions and bad accommodation. Australia, England and New Zealand continue to send officials a month before a tour to carefully inspect food, travel and hotel arrangements (India never sends its officials to other countries on such inspections). The distrust for Indian infrastructure is still there among first-world cricket playing countries despite the fact that this country offers the best hospitality today, adequately mixed with a good amount of native servility too.

Though host cricket boards do not offer guarantee money anymore to visitors, India is the most lucrative assignment for foreigners. No other country offers endorsements and column syndicates to foreign cricketers. The Professional Management Group has struggled to sell a Sunil Gavaskar column for just a few pounds to English newspapers. Steve Waugh charges $1,000 per column in India.Ricky Ponting sells Videocon in between overs in an India-New Zealand Test. Brett Lee has never played a Test here but has visited the country to shoot commercials. Even Zimbabwean Heath Streak endorsed a beer the last time he came. That's why, despite the hardships involved, despite a few players who choose not to come, the India tour is becoming the most attractive trip for international cricketers. It's a remarkable transformation for a country that was not treated too well in the past.

The English always came with a battery of journalists whose dispatches described India as an "area of darkness" and "the cockroach country". During a three-day match in Kanpur in the '60s, a paper in a report on the state of Indian hotels said that an English player "woke up with a snake for a bedfellow". Fortunately, the most embarrassing ailment a cricketer has ever picked up while on tour didn't happen in India. In the 1920s, Englishman Wally Hammond acquired a venereal disease in the Carribeans.

But till a few years ago, India was the most feared when it came to, in truth, the second best way to a man's heart—stomach. When the West Indies first toured India in 1948-49, the Calcutta Test was stopped many times because the players and one umpire kept rushing to the toilet after the previous night's Bengali chingri. Peter Parfitt's inclusion in the English side touring India in 1963-64 was not attributed to cricketing reasons as much as his reputation of being a man with "a cast-iron stomach". Years later, Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting would fall ill after eating 30 to 40 tiger prawns, either because they loved such food or it was free. And Shane Warne would insist in Chennai on importing beans from Australia. India, it seemed, was simply not good enough a host even though it tried hard.

Men like Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Rodney Marsh, John Snow, Denis Compton, Len Hutton and Jim Laker never toured India fearing bad food and water. Bradman too never did but that was not because he skipped tours. Those days Australia never thought it was important to visit India. When Geoffrey Boycott visited India only for the second time in 1981-82, it was with a single-minded purpose of bettering Sir Garfield Sobers' batting aggregate record. After achieving it in Mumbai, he played a bit of golf and left midway through the six-Test series. Richard Hadlee too skipped several Tests in India.

It was never as though other countries offered conditions far superior to Indian hospitality. In 1971, Ajit Wadekar's team was dumped "in a terrible hotel" in England, as he recalls. A bomb had exploded nearby a few weeks before and the hotel was deserted but for the Indian team. "We never created a fuss," he says.

Next year, England sent a second-rung team under Tony Lewis, who had never played international cricket before. He was a philharmonic violinist who, as veteran journalist Raju Bharatan once reported, "played Bach better than Bedi". Lewis' men made sledging a fine art in India. They sledged at umpires too, a problem that, as visiting sides insinuated, was inextricably woven into hostile Indian conditions. Tony Greig, who appears particularly decent these days in the commentary box, constantly abused Indian umpires. The British media hinted sometimes that the reason why umpire M.V. Gothoskar never gave Gavaskar out was because they were related in some way. But Indian umpires were luckier than at least one Pakistani umpire called Idris Beg whom Tony Lock and other Englishmen dumped in a swimming pool after a rough day at work.

The old world and old grouses have ended. Umpiring in the subcontinent is not an issue any more. Visitors are flown to all centres and put up in five-star hotels that are closest to the ground.Even small towns offer high-quality international cuisine. Foreign cricketers are celebrated, sometimes for no good reason.

But an India tour remains the toughest in the world, as Fleming knew under his broad moist white hat, watching Rahul Dravid grind the bowling into the dust. There cannot be a greater revenge for making India play in New Zealand last year than making New Zealand play in India.