India, June 11 -- I stumbled on the itinerary of the Indian team's 1952 tour to England.

It began in early May with two months of 'warm up' matches (tour games) before India played the first of their four Test matches in July. India played a total of 29 matches on that trip!

Those were obviously different times when national teams had a lot of free time, India even more, as it was an emerging Test nation.

Now India are like business tycoons with a packed itinerary and not a day to spare, and within these constraints Indian cricket does its best to give overseas Test cricket the due diligence it commands. To expect more commitment than this would be unreasonable, so now it's a week in advance at the most and a couple of 'friendly' match...