The off-field challenges of touring India

Scyld Berry, in the Daily Telegraph, writes of the problems travelling England journalists and players faced in India in times past and the changes they're seeing today.

And the walls were somewhat thin. The hotel may have been built in the latest western style with no concrete spared, but nobody had thought about sound-proofing or noise insulation. Outside the window, lorries roared, auto-rickshaws swerved and horns blared, except perhaps for a couple of hours before dawn. A journey by road in India then, before toll bridges and flyovers, was at the speed of the slowest bullock cart.

The things you could hear through the walls of an Indian hotel in those days, just lying in bed! The businessman next door clearing his throat, and expectorating, not once but several times: that was a favourite.