I DAY-DREAM all too often watching cricket from my Press Box seat but when the schedule shows a 4 a.m. start, lunch comes along at 06.00 and I see the players going for tea before my breakfast I feel there is every excuse for lying back and wondering about the meaning of life.
It's my first experience of early morning cricket - and when the New Zealand tour begins in February we gentlemen who have chosen to lie a-bed in England this winter will get a taste of all-night matches thanks to the 13-hour time difference - so I suppose I can be excused for asking embarrassing questions.
For instance: Why does Bob Willis sound more asleep at 10 O'clock in Mohali than I do at 4.30 a.m. back home with the hoar frost thick on the lawn and the wind hitting a higher speedo reading than Darren Gough?
Why does the radio commentator Jon Agnew think that running down India is such a good joke? Yes, overseas is not like Melton Mowbray and the food does taste strange and a change of water sometimes has bizarre effects on the body; but it happens to my doctor whenever he returns to India and really Jon, do we need to keep on about it?
And, is it really necessary for everyone on the Stock Exchange to dial into CricInfo as soon as they remove their striped blazers and show off their scarlet braces? Just when I want to check out the contrasting scores on offer from BBC's Test Match Special and Sky's sportscast?
I suppose you'll say that if I had jumped on a plane and flown to India I would not have to ask these questions but I decided that the health needed a long sabbatical from the strain and pressure of reporting England's doings abroad. However unbiased the reporter is, he cannot expect to enjoy the sight of his national side losing.
And after the Ashes defeat and the defections by Gough and Alec Stewart, Andrew Caddick and Robert Croft, that was obviously going to happen yet again.
By the way, all the talk of Michael Atherton being missed is not quite on the mark. Iron Mike took part in more defeats than victories in his 12 years with England and, for all his powers of concentration, he could not carry the side.
Actually, I think they missed Stewart more. Imagine him at No. 6 instead of James Foster at No. 8. That might have changed the course of this Test.
Naturally, England's defeat at Mohali leaves serious questions to be answered.
I want to know where is the England Test team's equivalent of David Beckham, now captain of England's World Cup side for Japan and Korea next mid-summer, and not just one of the richest stars in the country with a posh wife. He is such a certainty to be named Sportsman of the Year by so many different organisations that he will not have time to count his honours before he learns to use chopsticks.
It would be nice too if someone would explain who is hiding cricket's Michael Owen? And why have David Graveney and his selectors have not found their own Tim Henman?
My belief is that the England team lacks only one person - but a genius - to become the finest Test-playing side in the world.
If England had Jacques Kallis - with his Wally Hammond physique and an unquenchable thirst for runs, his willingness to bowl all day and a quick pair of hands and eagle eyes in the field - there is enough talent among the other players to run up big scores and take the wickets required to challenge Australia and South Africa at the top of the tree.
If England had one of the reborn Brian Lara, or the brilliant Sachin Tendulkar, or that Andy-cum-lately called Flower they might make everyone sit up and take notice; or more likely kneel down and shiver.
But somehow there has not been a dominant England cricketer to paint the heavens bright blue since the arrival of Ian Botham and David Gower more than 20 years ago.
Why not? It cannot be a national disease since in that time British athletics has found Jonathan Edwards, the record-breaking triple jumper to follow the gold medallists Daley Thompson, Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe. Football has found Beckham and Owen who would be contenders for a place in any side at any time in the history of the game.
During my lifetime I have listened constantly to overseas players say Wimbledon is an inspiration and watched the British players exit by round three. Henman is the only truly world class tennis player to emerge from these islands and win matches consistently in that period. One day he will win Wimbledon.
Cricket has recently produced a series of dull triers but not a single golden star. It needs some explaining, doesn't it.
The thinking man will tell you that the game cannot compete in financial terms with soccer and so the lad who has to make a choice aged 15 plumps for football which will bring him as much money in the Third Division as some cricketers earn after 50 Tests.
Athletics, golf, tennis, snooker and now Rugby Union, the new growth game in Britain, all leave cricket struggling to find two broken coins to rub together.
Yet money is not the only target even in this materialistic age. Enough schoolboys want to be Test cricketers although last summer one county official spent a tearful hour telling me that when he was a kid all he wished was a county cap; and that now a fast car and a big wage packet and, worst of all, as little cricket as possible, seem to be part of the fixed idea. That official has now left the game altogether, totally disillusioned.
I have no problem with young sportsmen trying to better themselves but there must be a fair return for high wages and at the moment cricket is not getting anything like a decent pay back from its players.
Not all is lost; there is a candle flickering at the end of the tunnel.
My dreams were rudely interrupted at one stage by the arrival of Andrew Flintoff, trimmer and fitter than he has ever been and going up to Sourav Ganguly and explaining one or two matters relating to the way the game should be played and how Ganguly was failing to maintain the Flintoff standard.
I was astonished. I did not think the big lad had the brass neck - as they say in his part of Lancashire - for confrontation and I was beginning to wonder if he had the talent for Test cricket.
Flintoff has just spent several weeks at the Australian Academy where, according to an intelligently-written diary from Andrew Strauss, the Middlesex left-handed opening bat - who plays, head over the ball, in the manner of Mark Taylor and you should watch for his musical name - life is nothing to do with cash and a lot of sweat is spilled.
It's not quite boot camp but the boss Rod Marsh stands no nonsense and that appears to have been a great benefit to the dozen or so English lads who have been there this winter. No doubt, a five-mile run to finish each day concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Next year Marsh takes charge of the English Academy - why has that taken so long to come on line eight years after Denis Silk, chairman of the old Test and County Cricket Board, proposed one - and there is a feeling already that if he fails to find a Beckham, a Henman or an Edwards he will at least produce lads who desperately want to play.
It is very comforting, 10 hours away from India to realise that nothing changes; although if Marsh has his way there will be a change in attitude among England's young cricketers that might make the other Test nations gasp.
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