Rejuvenated Vaughan ready for India
Michael Vaughan will step on to a plane bound for India on Sunday, and is relishing the prospect of swapping full-time father's duties for the second leg of England's subcontinent winter
Cricinfo staff
11-Feb-2006
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After the exhilaration of beating Australia last summer, Vaughan and England were brought back down to earth in the winter; they lost their three-Test series in Pakistan 2-0, and the captain returned home early to have surgery on his right knee. Vaughan, however, revealed that the quality time he has spent with his wife Nichola, daughter Tallulah and new son Archie over the last few weeks has left him feeling rejuvenated.
"Although I've been in the job for three years, I feel fresh. I don't feel as if I've been in it for three years," he said. "I remember getting the job but at times it's flown so fast that I still feel very young as a captain and hopefully I can do it for a while yet.
"I think this break has done me a world of good because it's the first proper break I've had for a while. I think it's refreshed me and I still feel quite young."
The captain has received an honorary degree from the University of Sheffield, his home town, and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) at Buckingham Palace on Thursday. But the pressures of celebrity have been put to one side over the last month and a half.
"I have to make the odd phone call and have meetings but I'm good at turning the phone off and not thinking about what I've just been talking about," Vaughan said. "You can never turn your phone off for a week but I'm good at spending little periods of time doing what I have to do and then forgetting about it.
"I don't watch cricket on television. I watch the odd bits of highlights but I couldn't watch a whole game," he said. "I've got better things to do like being with the family and watching Sheffield Wednesday. When you've got two kids you don't get that much time to watch a whole day's play so I don't do it."
Vaughan has been well-advised to make the most of any breaks, and periods of rest, at the start of the year. After the tour of India, England will soon face two home series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan before returning to India for the Champions Trophy in October.
They then fly to Australia for the defence of the Ashes before the World Cup begins next March in the Caribbean. The India tour is made up of three Tests, the first of which starts in Nagpur on March 1, and seven one-dayers.
"From the moment we arrive in Mumbai it's going to be cricket 24-7," he said. "You won't be able to get away from it. It's a great, great place to play, but when I look around our team there aren't that many who have played out there before so it's a great challenge for us.
"There are a lot of young players in this squad and a lot of energy and we're going to need a lot of that in hard conditions. We're going to need our body language to be very good and if we go there with good attitudes wanting to play hard, you can get a few more per cent out of everyone.
"Our expertise might not be as good as their expertise on their home soil so we have to make up for it in other areas to try and develop a way of winning that is slightly different."