Coach's Blog: Back to India

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We’ve been in Mumbai for three days now and as I’m sure you can imagine, much has changed in the 12 months since we were last over here with the Test team.

Firstly we’re now staying in a different hotel in Mumbai than the one we usually occupy, the Taj Mahal which was subject to a terrorist attack in November last year.

However, some things never change. The weather has been as hot as the food and as always, a large media contingent has followed us everywhere. But before I get to that, I thought I’d update you all on how the squad has been travelling in our preparations for the tour.

For a start, the facilities have been fantastic and we’ve been able to get in some cricket and start to acclimatise to what are very different conditions. We’re still three players short which makes it difficult for us, with our NSW contingent of Lee, Hauritz and Bollinger still involved in the Champions League Twenty20.

While it’s fantastic for them to be able to represent their state on the world stage, selfishly it would be ideal to have our full squad together a bit earlier than we do this time with those guys arriving tonight, just 12 hours before the first game starts.

We’ve had our normal couple of media days we do when we first arrive in another country. Ricky and I did an arrival media conference on Tuesday to talk to the press about the tour, the players and everything else Australian cricket. As is the norm on those media days, if there were seventy questions asked, sixty-eight went to Ricky. I said to him on the way out, "I saved you there didn’t I? I managed to absorb two of the tough questions for you." But the obvious focus is all about Ricky, our group and the upcoming contest between two very competitive cricket teams. Walking out from the press conference with Rick we left about 70 cameras and another 150 journalists, which I find amazing every time we are exposed to it, although when you consider how many people are over here in India that follow the sport I suppose it's fair enough.

Then media circus rolled on with our open media session after training on Wednesday. We had an hour where all players plus myself are given to the media for two half-hour blocks. We have 30 minutes with the print media and then 30 minutes with the electronic media, where they do short promos and little grabs and interviews for news channels, sport shows, and the host broadcaster to utilise throughout the series. So I can confidently say we've had our fair share of media.

We had our last training session today before we head off to Baroda where we play the first one-day game, about a 50-minute flight from Mumbai. The group are feeling confident and we're all feeling pretty good about our ODI cricket after a fantastic win in the ICC Champions Trophy. We've played some excellent one-day cricket over the past six months, beginning with our ODI series against Pakistan in Dubai, carrying that form into the England ODI series, and finally through to the Champions Trophy. The Champions Trophy was something we were really targeting. When we went to Dubai we knew we were going to be playing on slow low wickets, were expecting similar in both England and Sth Africa at this time of the year, and to take the experience and apply in the Champions Trophy to defend the title was fantastic.

We continue our learning curve now travelling to India, and importantly there's a World Cup here in 2011. This is a fantastic chance for some of our young blokes to get some more experience playing in Indian conditions. We have a few young players coming back into the side. Unfortunately Callum Ferguson hurt his knee in South Africa, but that means Shaun Marsh gets another opportunity after missing some time with a hamstring injury, which is great for him.

Without Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin and Nathan Bracken over here we have a different looking group to our norm. The positive out of this is by the time we come back here for the World Cup I hope we will have 15-18 players who are well and truly acclimatised to playing one-day cricket in this part of the world.

I'll do my best to keep you updated from here over the next few weeks, keep your comments coming and at the end of the tour I’ll look to answer a few more questions with another mailbag.

All the best to all those that are starting their seasons off during this period and I’m sure we can play some cricket over here that will inspire great performances out of you all!

Tim

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