The last few days here in India have been great. Typically we are on the pitches warming up between 8.45 and 9 am and we are finishing between 3.30 and 4.30. Of this time we spend a minimum of 1 hour on fitness and fielding under the watchful eye of Brian O'Rourke, and we can lose up to 4 kg per day if we dont take enough fluids.

The weather is very hot, and this is taking it out of us all both physically and mentally; in a 40 minute batting session we are all able to think logically about things like shot selection for the first 30 minutes but the last 10 are really tough, all of a sudden it is much more tempting to try and play the big shot when the lower risk option is usually the better one.

On Sunday we played a match at Bombay Gymkhana (which hosted a Test match v's Jardine's England in 1933) against a local team who we beat convincingly. The Somerset lads played with us and we are all benefitting from being around them, they are easy to approach and more then willing to give us advice whenever they can.

One of the challenges of playing cricket in India is adapting your game to the different surfaces and we have been lucky that we have batted on a different surface every day; today we played on a green seaming wicket and also on a 4th day turning wicket, two days ago we played on a hard 1st day wicket and yesterday we played on a flat batting wicket.

Today we were filmed batting and bowling, the video is being analysed by a new software package developed by Kevin Shine for ECB and we will each be getting a DVD to take home of the areas we need to improve on technically.

The amount of cricket played over here has to be seen to be believed, in a field the size of a football pitch there would be at least 5 league games taking place at the same time! The standard of the Indian players is very high and we are facing quality bowling every time we bat. - it would be great if Old Belvedere looked for players over here rather than trying to take players from Malahide to improve their 1st team!!

Off the pitch we are being well fed at the CCI Ground every night and we have also managed to find a Dominos Pizza. Last night a few of us went to a sports bar where we were priviliged to witness Ben Ackland performing "The Robot".

Spirits in the camp are high and we are looking forward to making the most out of our last 4 days over here. The next four days will be spent at the impressive CCI grounds which has a swimming pool that comes in very handy at the end of the days training.