The odds are that they will be far from being acclimatised even after the tie is over. Coach He Deng-po, who also puts in a lot of effort to unravel the mysteries of the Queen's language, put it rather simply, ``We have two grass courts. Both of them are in a hotel.''

``There (in China) the grass is very big,'' the distance between his index finger and thumb increases. For somebody who is coaching a part-time team that is some understanding of the ground realites at South Club, venue of the tie.

To top it all, China have landed with a three-member team after the fourth, or is it the third, member cried off at the last minute. One of the most famous DavisCup venues may not have hosted a three-member country in a long time. You cannot blame the Chinese either. The combined Davis Cup experience of three members stands at a princely six, all gathered within the last two years, against Indonesia and New Zealand. Their top player, Pan Bing, hero of the '94 Hiroshima Asiad, is also missing. Incidentally, he is one of He's trainees. ``He is sleeping (resting),'' He said of Pan.

In Indian sporting parlance, this would be an ideal team for an `exposure' trip. Zhu Ben-qiang is the number one player is ranked 771 with a win-loss record of 1-1, all against New Zealand. Zhang Yu, ranked 779, has more experience with a 2-2 record with both the wins coming against Indonesia in September 1998. The third member Jiang Shan has ``no ranking and no Cup matches'' and seems an unlikely candidate to lead the Great March towards a Chinese tennis revolution.

The remote resemblance to the 100-year old tournament comes from captain Wang Fu-Zhang who is said to have played the`maximum' number of ties for the country. And keeping with China's obsession with secrecy, the numbers are just not available.