Exclusive Tour Diary: Ebony-Jewel Rainford-Brent (England)

Ebony-Jewel Rainford-Brent © ECB

We arrived at Loughborough (National Cricket Centre) for one final camp to put the finishing touches onto our tour preparation before embarking on our flight to India early Tuesday morning. The general feeling was of anticipation to finally get outdoors and play some good quality cricket.

The build up had been so long and all the hours of hard work in the gym, the nets, all those miles travelled to get to a training session was tested as we set an aim in our December training camp that each of us would aim to lose an average of 5mm -10mm of fat by this training weekend.

The panic was on and I was concerned that all the vegetables, low GI food and discipline in training for the last two-and-a-half months may not be quite enough. The moment of truth was upon us, and the callipers reading said...I had lost 27mm of fat!

I was unbelievably relieved and after revealing the whole squad had lost an average of 20 mm, we were all in good spirits.

We had certainly all been putting in the hard work and it was starting to show (although as a reward I did eat dinner on Saturday night as if I was trying to put it all back on, including two desserts!).

Monday saw us all desperately trying to pack and keep our luggage allowance to under 50kg and travel down to Heathrow to stay in a hotel overnight before the early Tuesday morning flight.

The first thing that hit me when we stepped off the plane in the early hours of Wednesday morning was the heat. It was early morning and I was already 'gently perspiring'!!! Luckily it was a quick journey to the hotel. We didn't really know what to expect and we were all pleasantly surprised with the hotel and friendly staff that greeted us.

The rest of Wednesday was spent recovering from jet lag and getting accustomed to the heat and environment before training the next morning.

Thursday and we were at the international MAC A' ground for nets at 8:30am. It was extra special for me as it has been a long time since I have bowled outside, so I was really excited. Then to be practicing at a Test stadium just made the experience even more special.

To put the icing on cake my Surrey bowling coach, the legendary Geoff Arnold, appeared out of the blue and came to see me and give his input. We had a really positive session and dealt with the 30o temperature extremely well.

The rest of the day was packed with our pool recovery session, shopping in Chennai centre and for some of us the stresses of fitting in studying on top.