The Surrey youngsters have now returned from their trip to India and here on www.surreycricket.com, you can read the last instalment of Matthew Spriegel's blog.

In the last couple of days of our trip the conditions started to get a lot tougher as the temperatures increased. We had all been told about the importance of keeping hydrated out in India to prevent illness, even to the point where we were always carrying a bottle of water round with us. I have tried to drink as much as possible during the day, as much as seven or eight litres at times – the days where I haven’t, I have really felt the difference.

Tuesday’s training session started with a net where we batted in pairs and after every four balls you had to run a three. The idea of this is to try and imitate the fatigue experienced in the middle where concentrating can often become more difficult. Following on from the net, the drills throughout the morning included the small tennis ball and bat drills where the feeder mixed up the pace and spin. We had a little competition where we tried to hit as many in a row as possible. If you missed one, then your count would start again. Murts (Chris Murtagh) won with 25 and I came second with 23.

That afternoon we had another net but again with a slight difference. We batted with five stumps behind us, with the idea being we had to play as many balls as possible and make sure we got into the correct positions to play them. It was very difficult and completely different to anything I had done before. I definitely enjoyed bowling more than batting that afternoon!

That evening we had a quiet night in the hotel, as Uzi (Usman Afzaal) had invited us to his girlfriend’s birthday party which we were going to go to the next evening.
On Wednesday we had a match between ourselves. Our trip has coincided with a couple of ECB Academy players and other County players - including Andrew Hodd (who we obviously know well from his Surrey days), Graeme White from Northants and Kyle Coetzer from Durham.

Amusingly the match was delayed while rubbish was cleared from the outfield and then the game was stopped briefly as a rubbish truck drove across the outfield to pick it up. The English guys were split up and the rest of the teams were made up by the locals who had been bowling at us all week. I captained one side and the other was captained by Tom Smith of Sussex. The idea of this was to try and put what we had learned in the week of intense training into a game situation.

The theme for the party we were going to with Uzi was hats and wigs, so after dinner we went to the shops and bought some authentic Indian headwear. It looked fantastic and went down an absolute storm at the party! Uzi’s girlfriend happens to be a big Bollywood star, so at the party there were some of the biggest names in Bollywood. Sadly we had no idea who they were. We bumped into Monty Panesar, who was there for a while! It was a great party and one we will all remember for a very long time!

On our last day we had a training session in the morning which Mohammad Azharuddin attended. He watched us bat and gave us all advice on how to improve and little things we can work on when we get back to England. At the end of training he gave a Question and Answer session. It was fantastic to talk to one of the greatest players of spin ever.

Kingy (Simon King) is still out in Mumbai and will be for another couple of weeks. He will continue to work hard and will be working with Harbhajan Singh’s bowling coach which will be an awesome opportunity. Myself, Nad (Nadeem Shahid) and Murts meanwhile flew back into the country at the weekend, which was a shock to the system. On the flight we reflected on what had been a fantastic ten days where we had all learnt so much and improved a great deal in such a short space of time. Hopefully this will stand us in good stead for the build up to the start of the season.

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