Perth's curator awoke one morning from uneasy dreams

Pitch preparations, vows of silence and calls to show up or shut up

It was a dark and damp Thursday morning in Perth.

Greetings from Perth where the Indians have embraced a vow of silence, the curator anxious and the locals are being urged to defy that secessionist spirit and show up to the cricket.

Last century, when I used to roam the subcontinent with the travelling hippies, I was intrigued by the spiritual practices, including one where devout types would embrace the yogi concept of mauna, or silence. The Mahatma was a fan and would never talk on a Monday, and while he is out of favour in the new, alpha India, there is a chance the Indian team has decided to follow suit by not talking on Mondays, Tuesday and any other day of the week.

You may have heard on the Cricket Et Al podcast that the Indian cricket side has been in Australia for the best part of a week without uttering a word in public. They also went out of their way to make training difficult to witness.

It’s pretty frustrating for the scores of journalists who have made their way to Australia to cover their team, but they get used to being treated with such disdain. Either that or Australian journalists have become accustomed to the opposite. In Australia the game needs attention, in India it is overwhelmed by it _ and perhaps that explains the difference in approach. Still, you reckon they could have thrown the people who’ve made the effort to come out here a bone or two. (Jasprit Bumrah is due to speak later today, I am pretty confident he will show up and I’ll meet you back here later to fill you in on what he and Pat Cummins have to say).