Weary Indians arrive in Kingston

"Enjoy your stay here maan but we hope your team get thrashed". Shortly after uttering these words in a seriously passionate tone, the customs officer at Kingston's Norman Manley airport laughed. The Caribbean fervour for cricket was there for all to see, yet even he knew that the days when West Indies "thrashed" opponents was long gone.

Exactly 24 hours after they boarded their British Airways flight from Mumbai, in the wee hours of May 12, India's 15-man one-day squad resembled a bunch of zombies. Apart from two long flight trips, spanning close to nine hours each, they spent close to five hours in transit at London, where they stood in the immigration queue entertaining autograph hunters before enjoying a pleasant bus ride from Heathrow to Gatwick airport.

Jet-lagged, fatigued and disoriented, Rahul Dravid and his boys sleepily unloaded their luggage from the conveyer belts at Kingston airport. A weary Dravid reiterated that it was a "great opportunity for his young side to enjoy themselves" and remembered the kind of "learning experience" his previous sojourns (in 1997 and 2002) had been. "I remember coming here as a young boy on my first tour and picked up a lot of things on that tour," he continued. "One read a lot about the West Indies while growing up - their crowds, their grounds, their great players and it is a great place to play cricket.

"Most of our players are coming here for the first time. The youngsters in our side are very excited and the atmosphere is great. We've had some one-day success recently and we're looking for a good start in the one-day series." He added that playing away gave them the chance to "stay in a cocoon" away from the spotlight, a fact that "definitely helps in creating a good team environment", building team unity. "It's been a long journey but we need to recover from it quickly and look ahead to the practice game on May 16."

That match is scheduled to be played at Montego Bay, Jamaica's second largest city with a sizeable Indian population around 200 kilometres from Kingston, and famous for being home to Steve Bucknor. "Steve was a good umpire," barks Glenn, my co-passenger on the aircraft, "but he stayin' on too long". Glenn, swigging a Red Label, claims he is a "huge" cricket fan. "Twenty years back, we would all go to matches to just have fun ... knowing that whatever happened we would ultimately win. Today, things are different. We need to worry about the result too." Considering the red-hot form that Dravid's one-day side are in, the West Indians may have plenty to worry about. Or will they?