Cricket may be more boring than baseball, but at least the wealthy team from India knows what it wants in food safety, and will bring a private chef to Australia this summer.
Only mild curries such as butter chicken are on India’s list of nutritional requirements, with the explicit instruction of “no spicy foods” written in large, red letters on their list of food demands.
The tourists are also desperate to avoid their millionaire cricketers like MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli becoming sick while in Australia.
They have issued Test venue caterers with pages of hygiene instructions, many of which are simply common sense.
Australia’s cricketers have long suffered Delhi belly while in the subcontinent but India’s elite cricketers won’t hear of having any food germs.
They have ordered that hot dishes must be served at more than 60 degrees Celsius, and cold food below five degrees Celsius, and detailed a long list of food hygiene requirements.
“All utensils should look clean and have no food or anything else visible,’’ the document states.
“All staff must wash their hands thoroughly with warm, soapy water.
“Utensils must be sanitised in a dishwasher at high heat and must be dried before use, with air drying the best method.’’
India’s list of nutritional requirements isn’t as extensive as when England was here last summer and wanted their dressingroom to resemble a Michelin Star restaurant for the Ashes.
The Poms demanded dishes such as piripiri breaded tofu with tomato salsa, a quinoa and cranberry breakfast bar, mungbean curry with spinach and pistachio and ginger biscotti.
India simply insist there must be no spicy or fried foods.
And they say no beef or pork related products should be used in cooking or food preparation, given their high number of vegetarian cricketers.
