Former England Test cricketer Basil D'Oliveira first showed signs of his class on a tour of the West Indies with Derek Robins' team. Young Kapil Dev impressed senior Indian cricketers with his phenomenal talent on a private tour of East Africa and not long afterwards, he was in the Indian team that toured Pakistan. Teams like Cricket Club of India and Hyderabad Blues have been excellent ambassadors of India, not only in the regular Test playing countries, but in other countries where a small minority pursue the sport with passion. They take young cricketers - and veterans - to some unusual locations of stunning beauty.

I can never forget the experience of playing for Hyderabad Blues before 35,000 paying spectators at Dhaka, long before any Test nation toured the newly formed Bangladesh. We might have been a loose combination of players from all over India, but as our skipper Ajit Wadekar reminded us minutes before the toss, no matter what we were called, we were the Indian team and it was as good as a Test match. The match was played in all seriousness, like the rest of the matches on that tour of Australia, South East Asia and Bangladesh.

Today, we have the A team concept and India's young hopefuls gain valuable exposure to international cricket in conditions they do not experience at home. If the BCCI would only ensure that India A toured the stronger Test nations more often, our youngsters would be more prepared for Test cricket and touring abroad.

In the seventies, tours by clubs like the Blues or CCI filled this gap admirably. What they also did was to enable young cricketers to mingle with Test cricketers, past and present, and enrich their cricket education. Equally fortunate were cricketers who knew they had missed the bus and would never otherwise visit these nations and play against their Test and first class cricketers in superb cricketing conditions full of history.

An example of the kind of preparation such tours afforded youngsters was the experience of playing in Australia, where even club grounds have 85-yard boundaries. Anyone who has chased the ball to the fence and thrown it back to the keeper on one of these vast grounds is more likely to go home and strengthen his throwing arm than a stranger to those conditions. You also learnt to bowl and bat on wickets vastly different from Indian pitches.

Private tours make for greater interaction with people of the host nation than Test tours do. Very often, the visiting cricketers are billeted with cricketers' families and the resultant friendships are sometimes lifelong. My own unforgettable memories include playing against and sharing a few beers back in 1978 at a Perth clubhouse, with a young English left hander called David Gower, who we thought was not a bad little player!

Equally memorable was an after dinner speech made by Frank Magnus, an active member of Australian Old Collegians, a club that undertook several tours abroad including quite a few to India. Most of these speeches were marked by humour and repartee, with the opponents indulging in some merciless leg pulling, but for once our host struck a sentimental chord, talking of the bonds of friendship that cricket nurtured, bonds that took no notice of racial and cultural differences.

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