'It was the making of Freddie as a bowler'

"We encountered several of the same problems that this England squad has got. We had no Andrew Caddick, no Darren Gough, no Robert Croft, and we were under a bit of pressure from the start. Instead of going with a team of veterans, we had to work with a whole heap of youngsters, and my primary role as captain was to gel them together.

As captain I wasn't under any extra pressure, because I enjoyed going to India. The pressure in India comes when you go out there with a siege mentality and a closed book. There's no point in moaning about how much you hate touring the subcontinent, or how hard it is, or that everyone's ill, or that it's 40 degrees in the middle and the pitches are turning, and why are we out here anyway ...

For obvious reasons, I never had any of that. I was well looked after wherever we went, and our hosts were genuinely intrigued about how a boy from Madras could become captain of England. Personally, I always considered myself a boy from Ilford, but in their eyes it was significant. The team certainly loved me for it - I would get pushed out of the bus first, everyone would swarm round me, and the rest of the guys would sneak into the hotel while no-one was looking.

I enjoyed it then and I'll enjoy this tour as well. And to some degree, that's why I had success as a captain in the subcontinent. I understood the culture and playing requirements out there. As a team, we had been victorious in Sri Lanka and Pakistan the previous winter, because we adapted our tactics and absorbed the pressures. And that's what this side needs. They mustn't worry about how tough it is, but instead realise that anything they can achieve on this tour is almost doubly important.

India really is the heartbeat of the game. It is the place where, if you walk down the streets of Calcutta and Bombay, they really know about their cricket. So apart from the Ashes, a tour of India is the most important and most character-building of cricket experiences. It's where you find out about yourself and about your cricket as well.

In the field, you need to keep control of the situation and keep the crowd quiet. On previous England tours, we'd seen how Sachin and Vinod Kambli and Azharuddin had just taken control away from England. So our response was to formulate some plans in the warm-up games. We didn't worry about who wasn't out there, and just tried to work on what we had.

Our basic ploy was for the fast bowlers to bowl on one side of the wicket, with 7-2 fields or even 8-1. I used Andrew Flintoff as a strike bowler to target certain players such as Sourav Ganguly or Tendulkar from around the wicket, and used Ashley [Giles] in a variety of ways - sometimes attacking, sometimes defending. Whether they were right or wrong plans doesn't matter - the point was to give the team an end product, a plan to stick in their minds as a young side.

I came in for some criticism for my tactics at times, but people on the periphery never really worried me. My job was to make England a better side. Obviously as a captain, you are left in charge of the spirit of the game, but the fact that four years later people are still asking me questions about my tactics against Tendulkar sounds like I made it a more exciting series than if we'd lost 3-0!

At Bangalore, Sachin had the option, as [Virender] Sehwag did, to hit Ashley out of the rough. He got stumped for 90, but we bowled them out for 238 on a very flat pitch. He was successful, I was successful, everyone's a winner, and four years later we're all still talking about it!

I felt it was better for the game, rather than saying: "Here you go Sachin, we've left all our main bowlers back at home, where would you like us to bowl at you so you can get another hundred?" And then, as on previous England tours, India would have rattled up 500, and we'd have been left facing Harbhajan and Kumble on the last afternoon.

I had to be there for my team to look at me and say: "Our captain has got a plan, we're going to stick to it". What they didn't need was: "Well, he hasn't got a clue, we haven't got Gough, Caddick and Croft, and we're bound to lose."

Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard were brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Everyone said we'd got nobody to lead the attack, but I couldn't have been happier with their efforts. They bent themselves double to bowl for me and frankly I bowled them into the ground. Their energy, and the way that they bought into what we were trying to achieve, was incredible. They both ran through brick walls for me, and it was the start of fine international careers for both of them. It was certainly the coming of Freddie as a bowler, and everyone could see that, for a captain, Hoggard was a dream.

Along with the Australian team of the same era, that Indian batting line-up was the most formidable that I ever encountered. And so, for the side we had and the side they had, I was very happy with the performances. There were times during the following winter in Australia when I looked up and thought: "Crikey, what are we doing?", but on that tour, we managed to keep control in all three Tests, apart from one session in Mohali where we collapsed and that was where the series was lost. But that, unfortunately, is what can happen on the subcontinent, and you have to guard against it. Just look at what happened at Multan before Christmas.

That tour was the making of some of the youngsters who took part, but others - such as James Foster and Richard Dawson - haven't really featured since. It's a shame, because if you speak to [Duncan] Fletcher now and ask him: "Were you impressed with Dawson and Foster?" he'd say "Yes".

Unfortunately Dawson is not going to bowl too much at Headingley and so hasn't moved on, but if you look at the scoreboards, he's always getting runs and nipping in with wickets. He's a gutsy little cricketer and I particularly remember him battling it out as a nightwatchman in Perth against Brett Lee. As for Foster, character-wise he's one of the best players I've played with, and I know I'm a bit one-eyed about my Essex boys, but I think his turn might well come again.