The woes of the more-travelled

The Indian caravan has begun to roll, not only in terms of performance, but also by way of moving from one centre to another. The flight from Bloemfontein to Port Elizabeth went via Johannesburg and lasted all of six hours. By comparison, a road drive between the two destinations measures four and a half hours on the clock!

The Indians are in the process of now asking the hosts, in this case the United Cricket Board of South Africa, to have their Cape Town-Durban flight scheduled early at 9 in the morning on October 25. The urgency is only to be expected, as India play Kenya in a day-night match on October 24 and then play the finals at Durban on October 26 - quite easily the farthest distance between two major destinations in South Africa.

Somehow, unlike the cricket boards of England or Australia, a visit by an Indian official to check out the venues before the start of a series never seems to benefit cricketers and the team. If the team was quite reluctant to play the first-class games in Zimbabwe for 105 overs a day in May-June this year, they have reasons to complain about the present itinerary where busy periods are followed by long stretches of inaction.

These stretches haven't quite translated into socialising for players. It can't just be put down to the instructions of Greg Spencer, the security officer of the squad; the boys are more intent to maintain their focus and concentrate on cricket. Spencer, to be fair to him, doesn't quite oversee how the players spend their evenings. He is only active when the squad is moving together - for nets or for a match - and can be a bit stifling, even for players, with his safety precautions.

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Coach John Wright is not the one to waste these free stretches of time. He says he doesn't believe in off-days - instead, he terms it as "rest days". Also, practice on the day immediately after a game is never "optional" for boys - it is only not "compulsory." So it was at Port Elizabeth on Saturday, where half of the squad turned up and Wright worked on the issues that have been hogging his attention.

One, of course, is the matter of Reetinder Singh Sodhi. So good is he as a fielder that Indians somehow always find a way to put him on the field - in most cases in place of Javagal Srinath! But he is there as a player, not a twelfth man, and waiting to get into the Indian first eleven for the one-day internationals on this tour.

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His chance may come against Kenya at Port Elizabeth on Wednesday when he might be asked to bowl 10 overs at a stretch. Sodhi understands that he needs to work on his bowling to merit an automatic selection in an Indian one-day team. He is yet not a specialist batsman and needs to make it up with an improved show in bowling.

Rahul Dravid, the senior pro in the side, is doing whatever he can to help out the youngsters. Sodhi, to quote an example, was one of the beneficiaries of his attention at the nets on Saturday. "Jammy" spent a long time working on the Punjabi youngster's batting technique and driving ability.

Coming to Jacques Kallis' controversial catch in the slips of Sourav Ganguly at Centurion last week, Pat Symcox has a tale of his own to narrate. It so seems he had Arjuna Ranatunga caught off a full toss in a Test in Sri Lanka but the batsman didn't budge from the crease and the standing umpire was also unmoved. Ranatunga went on to make 130 and added to Symcox' s misery.

The Indians, though, are largely satisfied with the standards of umpiring on this tour. Ganguly seemed to have done his homework on a few of the men in white coats in this country. Like at Bloemfontein, when he brought Anil Kumble from the end where umpire Dave Orchard was standing. Orchard is trigger-happy when it comes to giving leg-before decisions against batsmen. Small then wonder that as many as five lbws were registered during the Kenyan innings last Friday.

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