West Indies will not be a cakewalk - Dravid

Rahul Dravid has played down suggestions that India head into their forthcoming tour of the West Indies as favourites. Dravid cited previous tours where pundits labelled them as favourites but how India failed to return home victorious.

"The West Indies are a difficult team to beat at home. We need to play really well if we have to win the series," he said. "People said the same thing during our last two tours, that we had a great chance. I think they will be a very good and competitive team."

India have not won a series in the Caribbean since a historic 1-0 triumph under Ajit Wadekar in 1971. Their previous two visits, in 1997 and 2002, resulted in 1-0 and 2-1 defeats and India were guilty of playing determined cricket in only fits and starts. "We need to play good cricket right through the tour," Dravid said. "I think we played good cricket in patches on the last two tours. We had our opportunities. We will try and maintain our performance and sort of ensure that we can keep producing good results. If we want to win a Test series in the West Indies or anywhere else, especially in a three or four Test series, we need to be more consistent."

Dravid also mentioned the opportunity to play against Brian Lara, recently appointed captain of West Indies for the third time. "Brian [Lara] has always been a great and phenomenal player. Obviously he's got knowledge and idea of the game," he said. "Having played against and with him [in the ICC Super Series in Australia], I can say he's been a terrific role model for West Indies cricket. I am looking forward to the challenge of playing against him again. It should be a very good series.:

Quizzed on the hot issue of excess cricket and player burn-out, Dravid said the key factors were breaks between tournaments and resource management. "I think 12 Test matches and 30 one-day internationals is probably the sort of agreed limit. It's probably a good number that can be played in a year," he said. "We would like to have gaps in between series as far as possible. It's also a question of managing the resources. We know there's going to be lot of cricket, a lot of matches. There's a challenge for the selectors and the team management to manage the squad in such a way so that they can rotate the players."

Dravid refused to comment about the scheduling of the ICC Champions Trophy, which will be played barely six months before the 2007 World Cup. "It's hard to get everything perfect, I guess. These tournaments have been scheduled long ago," he said. "I don't want to make comment on the scheduling of these tournaments and would rather stay away from it."

India play five one-day internationals and four Tests against West Indies between May 18 and July 4.