When I visited the South Zone Cricket Academy last month, I was struck by how homesick some of them were or ought to be, judging from the length of time they had spent away from their families, in their non- stop pursuit of their favourite game. Ambati Rayudu, for instance had been away for nearly a year, if you didn't count brief visits home between numerous cricket trips. Doesn't this tell on the quality of their cricket, I wondered.

Today's young cricketers play many more matches than earlier generations. (It is another matter that inter-school cricket, which provided the players much pleasure and excitement in an era with a less crowded schedule, is now almost entirely of the limited overs variety - and I don't believe that is the best way to nurture young talent). They don't stop there; they attend a number of coaching camps and physical training programmes. In fact, both the administration and private `academies' ensure that the boys never spend an idle moment. The result is year-round cricket in one form or another, highlighted by summer camps that eat up the youngsters' entire vacation.

Things were different in our playing days thirty or more years ago. We actually had an off-season. For at least two months a year, there was a total holiday from cricket. No matches, no coaching, no net practice. Being young, we played other games during the period, and managed to keep physically fit and active, and were before long straining at the leash to play cricket.

Net practice began some 15 days before the start of the new season. A couple of friendly matches would be organized, so that we were not totally devoid of match practice by the time the first match of the season came round.

I can never forget the delicious sense of anticipation and eager impatience that preceded the start of each new season. The first day you started to middle the ball and time your strokes or the first time you bowled a really satisfying spell in the nets filled you with a special feeling that can only be described as a high. Every new season, skin peeled off my spinning finger, and it even bled. I, like other spinners, had my own little remedies to handle the condition, the chief one being more and more bowling so that a hard callus formed on the finger. The more the spinning finger hurt, the more you knew you were on your way to reaching peak form, and the very thought filled you with delight.

I wonder whether such a scenario is at all possible when cricket is played round the year. Do young cricketers any longer experience the first fine rapture of the first day of nets, or the first match of the season, when they have hardly left the old one behind? And during the few days they get away from playing matches, strenuous and sincere efforts are made to make them better cricketers with coaching camps, clinics and the like? Are we soon going to see situations in junior cricket akin to the injury-ridden plight of the senior Indian team in Sri Lanka?

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