New Zealand's tour of India officially begins on September 26. But try telling that to stand-in coach Ashley Ross.

Ross is already in India with video analyst Zach Hitchcock studying his side's opponents.

"We were having a Black Caps management meeting," Ross told reporters at a press conference at the M A Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, "and Zach Hitchcock saw on the Internet that the Rest of India were playing Mumbai. He saw the kind of players playing in the Irani Trophy game and suggested that we go a bit early to have a look. Credit goes to him for this."

India is seen as one of the toughest tours in the international calendar, not only because of the weather conditions but also because of the players' mastery over conditions in their backyard.

"It's always a great challenge playing international cricket, but India in India is always one of the greatest," said Ross, who is serving as new coach John Bracewell's stand-in for the tour. "Then again, we're looking forward to the challenge. We're excited rather than daunted."

The coach's visit is aimed at validating the plans that worked so well for New Zealand in their home conditions late last year, so that his wards can display their skills to the full extent.

"We are improving in world cricket," he noted. "We played well in Sri Lanka, where we stopped a nine-Test winning streak for them. We recently won a Test series in the West Indies, which was a record for us -- never happened in New Zealand history before. We won two Tests in England in 1999, at Lord's for the first time ever and at the Oval."

Ross has been keeping a close eye on Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and V V S Laxman, the mainstays of the Indian batting in the subcontinent, as he is aware that great players keep improving their game every season.

Complete Coverage The Challenger 2003 India's tour of New Zealand

"We had some very good plans," he said, referring to India's tour of New Zealand last December-January. "[But] great players are always involved with their game. We have to see whether the plans we made when India came over are still valid. Otherwise we'll have to change and keep improving."

The Kiwis under their astute captain Stephen Fleming have been training hard at Brisbane's Allan Border field in preparation for the huge Indian crowds and the tough conditions. They train from 10am to 5pm every day, simulating match conditions, complete with unruly, noisy crowds. The batsmen reportedly wear earphones blasting out crowd noise and work on using greater eye contact with their partners for running between the wickets.

"We've made the training as difficult as possible in the domestic club season," said Ross. "We were concentrating on checking whether players can cope with the kind of conditions you can expect here in India. We've worked very hard on those. It's about doing the right training drills in preparation for this tour."

The fear is the unknown, the New Zealand coach remarked. "A lot of our preparation has been geared towards diminishing the unknown. If you know yourself and know the enemy then you need not fear a thousand battles. I think it was Sun Tzu [the Chinese philosopher and author of The Art of War, probably the oldest military treatise in the world] who said that."

The exciting part, according to Ross, is that New Zealand now has a group of developing players who do not get overawed by history. "They want to make history of their own," the coach said.

Referring to the intense preparation that the Kiwis are undergoing, Ross remarked, "It is a public game and I suppose we could have turned up anyway. Really, there are no secrets now. Everyone knows each other and how they play and in the end I suppose it improves the standard of cricket. That's a great thing for the crowds and cricket in general."

Ross claimed that his wards are not unduly concerned about the kind of wickets that they may have to play on in India. "In the end we'll be putting ourselves on the line," he said. "Whether they are spinning wickets or grassy wickets, the challenge will be the Indian players, not the wickets we play on."

Meticulous preparation is an area where the Kiwis have always had an edge over the rest. "We saw a few things [in the Irani Trophy] that we liked," Ross said. "We have information on all the opposition over the last four or five years. That puts us in a great position to give Stephen Fleming information about field settings, where to bowl, that sort of thing."

Clearly, the Kiwis are looking to achieve what the mighty Australians could not. Whether they succeed in their quest is another matter.