Tour Diary

Suitcases, holdalls and cricket coffins. They are all normal pieces of luggage for the modern player. But prams and pushchairs? Even though there is a serious Test starting in three days, this is Christmas and a time for families to be together. It’s not only cricketers who have arrived in Durban.

Both England and South Africa have wives, girlfriends and children in tow. As South Africa arrived at their team hotel on Wednesday morning the mountain of luggage filled the lobby. Pity the poor bellboys who had to lug it to the various rooms.

South Africa are based in the city, just around the corner from the ground, while England are tucked away 15 minutes up the coast in Umhlanga. It’s a similar type of suburb to Sandton in Johannesburg, more relaxed and family-friendly than the rather edgy city centre. There is a new international airport being built to cater for Durban ahead of the football World Cup and it will be located not far from Umhlanga.

The morning after England’s latest nerve-jangling escape and it’s off to Durban. The big news is that we have arrived on a sunny day. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, and apologies to all those stuck in snowdrifts and shivering back in England, but in recent weeks this city has barely had a full dry day.

Those of the England squad and the following media pack who were here for the one-day series could barely get outside for a week. It was raining when they arrived, rained when they left and the middle bit was full of rain too. The long-range predictions for the Test are brilliant, either. “What’s wrong with the place,” one colleague has kept saying to me.

Maybe that is why I have arrived in KwaZulu-Natal with a less-than-inspired image of Durban (which isn’t the capital, by the way, that’s Pietermaritzburg about 40 minutes away). It’s hard to get a favourable impression of a place when you are stuck indoors, wiling away the hours as the rain hammers down. Especially when there’s meant to be cricket on.

However, I hate to judge a place before I have sampled it for myself so I’m not going to be making any sweeping statements yet. It’s Christmas, after all, the season of goodwill. Ah, Christmas, so it is. I’m sorry, I know it’s so clichéd and Englishman-overseas to say, but it really doesn’t feel like the festive season. It’s 28 degrees with 90% humidity. I almost didn't notice the big Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel. Anyone fancy sending a bit of that snow down this way. I can offer you a few degrees and some sunshine by return postage. Darn, no I can’t, the clouds have rolled in again. What is wrong with this place.

Last night’s press conferences were like an evening at the comedy club as Graeme Swann, a regular on the stage, and Paul Harris, a more unheralded joker, took it in turns to play up their audience. You wouldn't have guessed it had been a serious day of Test cricket.

It was a double-act between opposition spinners, but there was only one winner. “As soon as we get Harris out first thing in the morning, cause he’s waving like an idiot at the back of the room,” Swann said when discussing England’s plans, "we can concentrate on bowling straight and getting through the proper batsmen.”

Then it was Harris’s turn to face the media, but sadly he couldn’t compete in the laughter stakes. When discussing South Africa’s final-session bowling performance, Harris pointed to the inexperience of the attack.

It’s hotting up at Centurion. The mercury is nudging 35 degrees (and temperature readings are taken in the shade). Out in the middle it’s sizzling. No wonder England’s bowlers looked cooked after 153 overs in the field.

Conditions made for a sharp contrast from what England experienced for much of the previous two weeks. There was rain in Durban and more rain in East London before the sun finally made an appearance, but down on the coast the heat wasn't nearly as oppressive. All eyes are now on the forecast for the next few days to see if the thunderstorms return.

“I've been to South Africa a few times, so I knew it was going to be hot,” Graham Onions said. "In the build-up to this Test it hasn't been boiling hot, and it's been raining. We all expected it to warm up when the Tests started.”

So finally the Test series is upon us. It’s felt a long time coming, but that has helped raise anticipation levels. We are starting at Centurion Park (or the name of a certain TV company as it is known by) which is a wonderful stadium for cricket.

It has been able to marry the needs of a modern ground but also retain traditional touches. There is only one stand which covers about a third of the perimeter at the Pavilion End. It houses the changing rooms (with the long staircase to help with players’ fitness) corporate boxes and the media centre.

The press box is open air which is terrific because you get the full atmosphere unlike the hermetically sealed jobs that are springing up around the world. On my previous visit to South Africa, for the World Twenty20 2007, I had the experience of the open-air box at the Wanderers which virtually vibrated to a packed house of India and Pakistan fans during the final.

On Sunday evening after arriving in Johannesburg, the UK media were invited to watch the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year show at the team hotel as England were recognised for their Ashes victory with the Team of the Year gong.

It was a slightly surreal experience watching the programme through an unbroken feed pumped into a large conference suite. Usually I have watched SPOTY on my sofa at home. This time we got to see the pre-show warm-up and heard the instructions to the audience not to trip over the camera tracks.

The whole squad turned out in their finest Hugo Boss attire while representatives from the British High Commission added their support. The last time the cricket team were such a central part of the awards evening was in 2005 and the time difference wasn’t quite so friendly.

I have been in Potchefstroom, the university city about 100kms west of Johannesburg, for three days at the South Africa training camp. Many international teams and sports people make use of the facilities; athletes regularly train here, the Australian cricket team are fond of the location and Spain will base themselves here during the football World Cup next year. A couple of English counties are also planning pre-season trips as well.

As you arrive from Johannesburg, Potch – as it is known – just sort of appears almost out of nowhere. There are few tall buildings to catch the eye and the only clue was a sign in Afrikaans welcoming you to the town. I heard a random fact that it has the highest concentration of churches per head of population in South Africa. Anyone know if that’s true? There were certainly plenty of bells ringing on Sunday morning.

It’s a quiet time of the year at the moment with most education establishments having broken up for the holiday season. Occasionally I would see a truck or jeep laden to overflowing with furniture as students moved out. “We don’t get many tourists at this time year,” a local waitress told me.

In the modern game, media training has meant a lot of what players say is clichéd or coach-speak. With many players, you can go into a press conference and know exactly what you'll be playing back on your dictaphone 10 minutes later. “We hit the right areas”, “The guys gave 110%”, “I’ve just got to keep putting in the hard work.” The list goes on.

However, a Graeme Swann press conference is something to savour, so when he took 6 for 55 at Buffalo Park everyone knew they would have some great quotes to fill up their copy. Swann Days are certainly a long way from the legendary Duncan Days of old, when the former England coach used to have to front up to the media (a job he loathed), most notably on the days when his team had performed like a rabble.

Firstly Swann said he was “gutted” at missing his first hat-trick at any level when a delivery bounced over the stumps. “I told Straussy to put everyone round the bat”. He also added that he wanted to play the second two-dayer so he could avoid extra fitness work. "It doesn't really rock my boat," he said.

In my first dispatch from South Africa I mentioned Michael Henderson’s rather blunt assessment of East London 10 years ago, which made him “the most hated journalist in South Africa,” according to the local Daily Dispatch newspaper at the time.

I admit I arrived in the city with preconceptions, and as the rain fell on my first day – it was torrential during a mighty overnight thunderstorm, which forced a number of flights, including the one carrying Mushtaq Ahmed, to turn around – I could kind of see where Henderson had been coming from. However, after spending a little longer here I am starting to see the place in a different light. It helped no end that the sun came out for a day.

From my hotel in the centre of the older part of town, which does give the feel of stepping back a few decades, it’s a 20-minute walk along the foreshore to Buffalo Park. The waves crash against a rocky coastline as the penguins in the local aquarium sun themselves by their pools. Further along the path, people are selling African souvenirs, and if you carry on, rather than turn inwards towards the ground, you will reach the tall sand dunes that the England players sprinted up during one of their training sessions. There is always something impressive about a harsh coastline with the force of nature in full flow.