Stuart Carlisle finished the long tour of Sharjah, India, New Zealand and Australia on a high, with a magnificent century against the might of Australia that almost won the match for his side. He spoke to John Ward soon after his return to Zimbabwe.

The tour began in Sharjah back in October. Stuart, on his third visit, enjoys playing there. "There are normally pretty good batting pitches," he says, "although obviously you need to be able to play spin pretty well. The ball does turn there a bit. I did get one reasonably good score [60 in the first match against India], and I remember I got run out by Mark Vermeulen in the first game! This was his debut game, so that was a bit unfortunate.

"We've had a lot of close games there and we had some good individual performances again. The consistency is improving, but I still think it's pretty far from what we should be aiming for as a team. You never stop learning, and it's always a nice tournament to go to. Sri Lanka and India are competitive sides, especially in Sharjah, so it's always pretty difficult to get to the finals. We did have one game towards the end which we needed to win, and we should have won [the second match against India, lost by three wickets]." The first match against India was also close, the former winning by just 13 runs; in contrast, the matches against Sri Lanka resulted in two heavy defeats. "It just revolves around inconsistency again," is Stuart's opinion.

From Sharjah the team moved on to India. "It was my first trip to India," says Stuart. "For three-quarters of the team it was the first trip to India." Zimbabwe's last visit there was briefly for a triangular tournament in 1997/98. "It was a brand new experience, especially off the field. It's a very interesting place. Very hard cricket, but the wickets are reasonably good for batting, which quite surprised me, because I know it is very tough touring in the subcontinent. It did turn a lot, and we were a bit fortunate that Anil Kumble wasn't playing.

"It was very competitive. The crowds are very large and noisy there. Every ground was packed to the hilt, so it was a different kind of playing atmosphere due to the noise levels. I personally enjoyed India; I enjoyed the challenge again of batting at number three, even though we didn't have many good starts and lost early wickets in both the Tests and one-day internationals. It was a challenge to me to come in at number three and try to get a partnership going, and I believe I did reasonably well. It was good to face the old guys like Srinath, who are still very good bowlers; Ajit Agarkar obviously a very good player, a good all-rounder. It was good to face some really good spinners, like Sunil Joshi, and it was a good experience in terms of facing spin.

The highlight of the tour, from an individual point of view, was of course the magnificent form of Andy Flower. "It wasn't just the way he played, it was a learning curve for a lot of us," Stuart praises him. "It was fantastic to watch Andy play, and I hope the younger guys learned from watching him against those spinners – the way he played, the way he kept his head, his fitness levels and his long innings. They were invaluable and it's something to learn about in the future, especially for me and a lot of the younger guys, in terms of batting time at the crease.

Stuart frequently on that tour made a sound start to an innings but failed to follow it through to a really high score, which disappointed him. "I did get two Test fifties, which I was pleased about," he says. "But I got out on 58 and 51, and I believe I could have gone on and made bigger scores, even a Test century. But I've only played 14 Test matches, so I'm still aiming for that first Test hundred. I have a few Test fifties behind me now, so I'm laying the foundation, but I'm now looking towards getting a Test hundred – I really am." Stuart was also wise enough to learn from the batting of the great Indian players, notably Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly.

"I've heard the umpiring is not always up to scratch in India," Stuart says. "So I must say I was quite impressed and thought it was reasonably good.

"When it got to the one-dayers, I had a really good innings first up [91 not out at Cuttack], and there is no way we should ever have lost that game." Zimbabwe had India reeling at 205 for seven, chasing 254, but an explosive partnership between Badani and Agarkar suddenly turned the game around. "There were one or two overs where some of our bowlers did not bowl up to scratch at all. There was a whole change of attitude, when we had that game all the way up to the 45th over, and the Indians knew it. It just shows that if you relax for one or two overs it's a whole new ball game and we should never have lost it."

After that Stuart struggled, scoring just one run on 25 balls in the second one-day international at Ahmedabad. "It was a very slow, very dusty pitch," he says. "I like the ball to come on to me, and it was a new experience for me, the first time on very, very slow pitches. I'm not just saying t because I didn't get runs, but I didn't think they were very good one-day pitches at all. But it's no good complaining about it, because there will be times in the future when I'll come up against those sort of dusty pitches, so I've got to find out ways of scoring quicker, because that became a problem for three or four games thereafter.

"Towards the end of the tournament I improved, but unfortunately got dropped for the last game, on probably the truest batting wicket, where the ball was coming on to the bat very nicely! So that was a bit sad for me."

India introduced quite a few new players in the one-day series especially, so I asked Stuart if any of them particularly impressed him.

"Yuvraj Singh we thought after his knock in Kenya [in the ICC Knockout Competition] was going to be a big find, and he might still be a big find. But he didn't do much at all in India and I think he's more concerned about his looks, one of those players who perhaps came on to the international scene a little too soon. I think he needs to lay back his heels. He definitely has a lot of talent and is a player to look at in the future, but I don't think he approached some of our games in a proper professional manner, and I think cricket's got the better of him. I think he has all the talent in the world, but he just has to get his head sorted out, as I'm sure he will in time.

"Badani had some good one-day innings especially. He definitely looked a prospect for the future, and a really competitive guy, so that's good to see.

"Sodhi is another young guy who's only 19, and he bowled very well. He's also very competitive, not the quickest of bowlers but for one-day standards he bowled really well and has the most amazing amount of energy. He runs around the field and tries really hard – absolutely dead keen to pursue a really good career for India. He's another guy to watch. He can hit the ball a bit at the end – not a bad batsman at all – but what impressed me the most was his energy level. When you hit the ball past him he was jumping and diving, running around the field a lot. You don't see some of the older Indian players really chasing the ball or diving, so it was something new."

Did the team have problems acclimatizing in India? "You arrive there at about eight o'clock in the morning and the hotel is in reality only 20 minutes away, but because of the congested traffic it can take four hours to get there. Most of the hotels were really good, except for the last one or two. They were quite comfortable; the food was good but not a great variety. It was not so hot as it was actually in their winter, so it was pretty similar to the weather here in Harare. The heat factor wasn't bad, but we had to drink a lot of fluid.

"But the biggest problem for us was the travelling. I think that definitely for the future, if we are going on three- or four-month tours, the one day off here and there, where guys can go and do their own things and take their minds off cricket a bit – I don't care what anyone says, you need that mental break. We were at one stage waking up at five in the morning to catch a flight at half-past six, flying two hours to, say, New Delhi, and from there we're going to Rajkot, which is another hour and a half's flight, and from there we're getting on a bus for three hours. Then we have a practice in the afternoon, and sometimes our practice went on four or five hours. We practise very hard as a country, probably the most of any of the countries. So we were getting back to the hotel at half-past six or seven in the evening, then going out for a quick feed. It's a long day and the next day you're starting a match, a three-day match, and then after the match you're getting up at six o'clock, catching internal flights, bus rides, practice in the afternoon – the same thing occurs every day. So if people think we have one of the best jobs in the world I would think again! There are a lot of cons that do occur.

"I think those rest days are important. Maybe the tour organizers think that if we are on a three-month tour, our having one rest day and going to some of the sights or relaxing, even for two days, maybe they think that's a holiday for us. But we've got our physiotherapist and the management and the coach saying we need breaks at certain times. In Australia we had a two-day break, a Friday break, because we were just so exhausted it had to happen, so they gave us a voluntary practice on the Saturday and we played against Australia on the Sunday. That's when I got 44 and I know for myself I had a lot more energy than I had before. My concentration levels were much better, and after the 44 I got 36 and then 119. For me personally I felt that was a good break I needed – some guys might feel differently."

The team then moved on to New Zealand, where the summer was somewhat cooler than the Indian winter they had just left, and certainly wetter. The solitary Test match was rather a dull affair, played on a dead pitch, and New Zealand took half the match to score 487, making a draw even more likely.

"We believed we declared at the right time," says Stuart. "We gave them enough time, and they could have given us 60 overs to chase 260 or 280 runs. We would certainly have tried to have a go at that, in the first 15 or 20 overs especially, and taken it from there. They could have got three or four wickets and we would have been on the defensive – but it was always going to be one of those games where it was difficult to get a result.

"They were very slow, scoring only 190 runs on the first day. We thought they were a little too conservative, but Stephen Fleming reckons it was always going to be hard to set us a total because of the pitch. Their excuse was that they shouldn't give Test matches away on a plate, but I don't think you can do that if you're chasing 280 off 60 overs.

"Australia are setting the tone [for more positive Test cricket]. I know Steve Waugh had a go at our Test match, at Stephen Fleming in particular for being negative. They're setting the tone and saying that you should be scoring 260 or 270 runs on the first day of Test matches nowadays, and adding a hugely positive flow to Test cricket – I think it's great. I think other countries should follow this. Stephen Fleming has declared at times before and I've seen him be positive at times. He's a very nice guy, and can be a good captain, and I'm surprised being a New Zealander why he would be positive. We feel he could have declared and made a game of it, but he's got his own reasons and he's entitled to them – that was fair enough.

"The guys played reasonably well; Gavin Rennie played well for his 93 and it's a bit sad we didn't get a result from that. But it's a bit hard when you're only playing one Test match; you've got to play at least three Tests in a series I believe, or at worst two Test matches. But one Test is sometimes a bit of a dud game because you feel that you're just going for the one-dayers.

"The one-day games came up, and obviously it was fantastic for us to win the one-day series away. The last game was really exciting and Heath Streak batted brilliantly with Andy Flower and Dirk Viljoen to get us to that total in the end, especially after the start we had [64 for five chasing 274]. In the first one-dayer I had a good knock [75] with Andy Flower and we made a really good partnership. Then our bowlers came in and bowled really well, and we took our catches; Bryan Strang took a fantastic catch off Roger Twose, the sort of thing that can always change a game, especially when he has been batting so well on one-day tournaments lately. We took our catches, we took our opportunities and we kept them on the back foot the whole game. I think they might have been a little overconfident at the beginning of the game, but we were happy to go one-nil up.

"They came back quite hard in the second one-dayer, and Nathan Astle batted really well [89 not out]. We did have one or two dropped catches up front which definitely cost us and would have changed the game a bit. In the third one-dayer Streak and Andy Flower kept their heads and it was fantastic. It was good to win that game and win the series two-one. Once again there were some good individual performances. Our fielding up until then had not been great; we were having mixed patches, some fits of brilliance in the field and then some really poor fielding. It was inconsistent and dropped catches were costing us, which is unlike Zimbabwe fielding, which as you know is normally up there with the best in the world. But it was one of those things; we ended up winning the series and it was good to leave New Zealand soil on a positive note."

I wondered if this series was perhaps a turning point downwards for New Zealand morale, in view of the struggles they have had since then, especially in the absence of their top all-rounder Chris Cairns. A number of recent reports seem to suggest they are a demoralized team at present, and the loss to Zimbabwe may have played a major part in this.

"Definitely," agreed Stuart. "If you had happened to look across at their faces during the prize-giving, it was a sight to see. They were all obviously very down and I don't blame them, because when you have a side 64 for five there is no room for complacency, so that was their fault. But I don't blame them in the sense that you should back yourself still to end up winning the game. I know that when I got out and we were four down they were jumping around and laughing, maybe a little over-confident, so maybe that was their downfall there.

"But it was great to see our guys so happy and it was a fantastic thing for us to go to the World Series on a positive note. I'm not too sure about the younger guys, but most of us knew how hard this World Series tour would be. We were all very excited about this trip. We know how hard the cricket is there; it's the hardest cricket in the world, I believe. Their first-class cricket is very competitive."

** Stuart Carlisle's views on the Australian leg of the tour are included in the succeeding article.

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