The snow-covered peaks in the backdrop add to the charm of playing cricket in this mountain city. The hotel we chose to stay in was about half an hour's drive away from the ground and driving in that kind of terrain can be a bit of a bother for some, but once you set foot on the ground, everything else fades into oblivion. I must mention here that a lot of thinking and hard work has gone into building this facility and other associations can take a cue on just how much can be achieved if one has vision and the passion. The track is also almost ideal to play cricket on as it offers enough for everyone in the business. It won't be long before an international match or a national camp is held here.

The tournament finishes in nine days as the matches are held on every alternate day and if the rest day in-between includes travelling, it can get gruelling for the players. Contrary to popular belief, a one-day match takes a lot out of a player and the lack of adequate rest and time to recover can lead to injuries and fatigue. One might suggest a player-rotation system but with selection for the Deodhar Trophy, the one-day zonal tournament, at stake one can't afford to take a break because in the end it's all about the numbers: how many runs and how many wickets a player took.

As I mentioned earlier, we played our first two games at Dharamsala and the third match was held at Una which is three hours from Dharamsala. Since the hotel at Una is adjacent to the city's bus station we tried to spend as little time in Una as possible. The incessant honking of the vehicles deprives you of much needed sleep after the game.

Here comes the most annoying feature of our scheduling. After playing the third game at Una we went back to Dharamsala to play the fourth game before coming back to Una to play the fifth and final match. Basically we played three games at Dharamshala and two at Una, which is absolutely fine, but what irks me is the fact that it wasn't scheduled in a better manner, so as to avoid such to-and-fro trips that only adds to the player's fatigue.

Why did we play the third and the fifth game in Una? Why couldn't we finish our games in Dharamsala before shifting base to Una for the last two matches? And we weren't the only team doing the shuttling between Dharamsala. There were other teams too. Only a small amount of commonsense and understanding would have saved us the ordeal. But is anyone listening?

Playing the Ranji one-day matches takes you to the old days of playing matches within the zone and keeping an eye on other teams involved because only two qualify for the knock-outs. Domestic competition ceases to be a national event for these few days. Only when your team qualifies do you ask about the other teams qualifying from the other zones, as you would eventually be playing against one of them.
The general consensus among the players is that now that we have the Elite and Plate groups in the Ranji Trophy we must continue with the same format for the shorter version as well. There are always at least a couple of teams in every zone which are pushovers, but they help boost the individual performances of players, which might be enough to fetch them a place in the zonal side. But this fails to deliver a true reflection of their talent.

Cheers

PS: Please send the questions you would like me to answer in the next post. Tx :)

	Unforgettable friendships are formed, while sharing the best times of one's life with team-mates © Cricinfo Ltd

Dear friends

Talking about cities and suchlike certainly isn't my cup of tea, but having returned to this splendidly beautiful place, Dharamsala, I felt obliged to write something about this place, to share my feelings with pen and paper, or monitor and keyboard as it is for me now.

We are in Dharamsala for our one-day matches. I have been here a few times before, but every time I return I feel a renewed love for this state. It is so beautiful and serene, one couldn't ask for a better getaway from the chaos and rush that big cities are partial to. We have matches on alternate days and that allowed us a free day in between to simply laze around, a luxury in our hometowns where we are constantly on the run - even on rest days.

We went out in the afternoon, looking for a good dhabha. Since we are staying a fair distance away from the civilisation we hired a cab and four of us jumped in. We skimmed through a few eateries before finally settling on a place that was really small but promised good food as it was one of the oldest dhabhas in the area. We were hungry and we ate as though there was no tomorrow. We weren't let down by the food either, as we thoroughly enjoyed the food while talking about almost everything from the meaning of "calories" to the developments in the IPL. After getting back to our hotel totally satisfied and heavy bellied, we went out for a digestive stroll in the mountains. We continued our multi-topic discussions along the way.

That's when I realised just how lucky we were to be given this chance to enjoy each other’s company, without a worry of the future creasing our foreheads - at least for the moment. This is a luxury only the domestic cricketers get to enjoy, as one can't imagine Test cricketers going dhabha-hopping or having a stroll without getting mobbed. Certainly not in India.

Yes, everyone playing domestic cricket is trying to make it into or make it back into the Indian team, but one could and certainly does have a lot of fun along the way. Perhaps most of us are too caught up in the pursuit to achieve our goals, and hence don't realise its importance right now but I'm sure that we're going to miss all of this when it's over. It's not just the cricket one would miss (once one decides to call it a day), but also the days spent sweating it out for and with one’s team-mates on the field - even during practice sessions, spending hours on the roads, trains, flights and airports together and sharing the best time of our lives in each other’s company. I am savoring each moment of it all because I know it's not going to last forever.

Please don't misunderstand me here, I'm not hanging up my shoes anytime soon - far from it. It's just that the peaceful surroundings here gets you into an introspective mood.

God bless

	That red thing in his hand is a Kookaburra, but chances are Siddharth Trivedi didn't get to practise with it © Getty Images

Dear readers

In the previous post I wrote about the decision, taken a couple of years ago, to use the Kookaburra ball in the Duleep Trophy. We were excited about this change, but we faced a strange situation right at the beginning. These Kookaburra balls are really expensive - over Rs 3000 - and hence were not made available for use in our practice sessions, even on the days before the matches. It was a little bizarre to practise with an SG Test ball when the game was to be played with the Kookaburra. But who were we to complain, and more importantly to whom?

The second bit of surprise came when the match referee explained the playing conditions to the captains. It was decided that the ball would not be changed even if it went out of shape. Reason? There weren't enough spare balls available! The hosting association was provided with only six to eight new balls to conduct the match, out of which one was to be used at the start of every innings in the match. They were given a cushion of four additional balls in case the teams took new balls after 80 overs. It goes without saying that the number of balls provided to the fielding team to choose the match ball from kept reducing by one with every innings. Normally, the fielding team is provided with 10-12 balls to choose from, but these were not normal balls.

Things changed in the following year. We were given adequate number of balls to practise with, but on the condition of returning it to the hosts after the net session. The host association was accountable for these balls, and had to return the balls to the BCCI after the game. Or so we were told. We didn't have a problem with this arrangement. The only difference from a normal training session was that we were still doing the fielding drills before the match with the same old SG Test balls. Things improve further this year, and we faced no such problem. There were more than enough balls to practise with and to choose the match balls from.

We at Delhi still face the same problem – the unavailability of the Kookaburra balls for practice ahead of the Ranji one-day tournament, which will be played with the white Kookaburra balls. We are told that the balls are too expensive, and hence we must make do with some other local brand that is white in colour, to get the feel of the white ball. We would be given an odd Kookaburra or two every now and then in the interim. I am struggling to get my head around this decision. Yes the balls are expensive, and must therefore be used sparingly, but definitely not as scarcely. If money is such an issue with the association then how the same association managed (if a newspaper article is to be believed) to spend Rs 40 lakh on buying tracksuits for the cops and another obscene amount (nearly Rs 28 lakh) for an AGM totally stumps me.

Ours is not the only association with this queer arrangement. Most associations across the country are doing exactly the same thing. To make matters even worse this isn't restricted to just Kookaburra balls. When it comes to the Ranji Trophy even the SG Test ball is considered a luxury that most teams can't enjoy during practice sessions. Instead they practise with other cheaper balls. Things aren't that bad with our association, though, when it comes to red balls.

Another question that comes to my mind about the whole exercise of using Kookaburra balls for the Duleep Trophy is, whether it really serves its purpose of getting the players used to a different brand? It makes little difference because we play with these balls only once in a year. And only a handful of players at that. With the Duleep Trophy format changed to knock-outs, a couple of teams play only one game each, which could easily be just one innings. And the lucky ones who got the feel for longer than the rest find it difficult to remember its nuances for one full year.

To me, the idea of using these balls is to help the players modify or even remodel their game to suit this ball, and hence make it better suited for international cricket. But since it happens only once a year, it serves very little purpose. I'd suggest that every alternate round of the Ranji Trophy should be held with the Kookaburra balls. It will give everyone playing domestic cricket the feel of the Kookaburra balls, and also provide a different kind of challenge for the players. I firmly believe that man is a product of his circumstances, and if we play our cricket with SG Test balls day in and day out, we will become players suited for that particular ball. If we are exposed to Kookaburra balls from an early stage, our fast bowlers will learn to hit the deck hard, spinners will learn to put more work on the ball, batsmen will learn to bat cautiously when the ball is new, and most importantly our curators will learn to make the tracks hard and bouncy because there won't be a way out.

Take care

	'The SG Test ball doesn't swing much when it's new' ©AFP

A couple of years ago the BCCI decided to use Kookaburra balls in the Duleep Trophy to give our domestic players a feel of this type of ball, as at the international level, except for the Test cricket played in India and England, this ball is commonly used.

We, in India, use the SG Test ball and England plays with either a Duke or a Readers ball (these two are quite similar to the SG Test balls used in India). But even that is restricted only to the red balls because the shorter formats all over the world are played with the white Kookaburra ball.

It was exactly the same in the Indian domestic circuit till the introduction of the Kookaburra ball for the Duleep Trophy. The longer format, before this move, was played with the SG Test ball and the one-day matches with the white Kookaburra ball.

Every time the Indian team tours overseas we hear a lot about the difficulty our players face in getting used to the Kookaburra ball in the Test matches. One might just wonder what the fuss is all about. After all it's the same leather ball; the size, shape and the weight are exactly the same, regardless of the brand. All this is true, but let me assure you that there's a huge difference in the way different balls behave in the air and off the surface.

I'll start with the SG Test ball first, which has a more pronounced seam and which remains pronounced for almost the entire length of the innings. The pronounced seam helps the faster bowlers release the ball in an upright seam position, as it doesn't wobble much after the release, and it helps the spinners grip the ball better and also get purchase off the pitch because the seam enables the ball to grip the surface.

The SG Test ball doesn't swing much when it's new but as soon as one side (half) of the ball becomes shinier than the other, it starts swinging appreciably. The good thing for the bowlers is that the shine lasts longer and hence helps both the quicker bowlers as well as the slower ones. The quicker men get swing in the air and the slower bowlers get the essential drift.

Though the Kookaburra ball also has a pronounced seam, it fades away rather quickly. The new ball does all kinds of things in the air and off the surface but once the seam gets embedded in the surface (which happens too quickly for the bowlers' liking), it ceases to move quite as much. The lack of a pronounced seam not only makes it difficult for spinners to grip the ball but it also denies them purchase off the surface because the ball, instead of gripping the turf, just skids along. Finger spinners are the worst hit in this case and hence have to put a lot of revolutions (we call it work) on the ball to get something off the track. Wrist spinners face no such problem as they don't rely on the seam to grip the surface to get the desired amount of spin. One can always put more work on the ball with the wrist as compared to the fingers.

Now, there's a particular way to bowl with different balls. The faster bowlers who release the ball instead of hitting the deck are fairly successful with the SG Test ball. Since the shine stays for longer and so does the pronounced seam, the ball swings and seams the whole day if one can release the ball with an upright seam on a regular basis.

On the contrary, the Kookaburra ball doesn't swing even half as much once it gets old. One must hit the surface hard to get something out of it. The typical swing bowlers are easy picking as the ball doesn't do much in the air or off the surface once it loses its shine.

In this blog, I've tried to explain the basic difference in the two different brands of balls used in Indian cricket. Now, how much of it has helped i.e. has it helped and how is it handled at the ground level... I shall tell you some interesting facts and tales about that in the next post.

Till then, goodbye.

P.S. I wanted to share a small detail with you guys. The reviews of my book Beyond the Blues are out and the initial signs are very encouraging, almost all of them have written good things about the book. I'm assuming that it's true. Tx.