Intro:

India will leave for their three-month long tour to England in the early hours of Sunday.

They are scheduled to play five Test matches as well as five one-day internationals (ODIs) and a single Twenty20 international on the tour.

It will be the first time since 2002 that India will play in a five-match Test series.

On the eve of their departure, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni held a news conference in Mumbai, from where the team will depart.

Dhoni is hoping his young team will put up a better show compared to their last tour of England three years ago, when they suffered a 4-0 whitewash in the Test series.

India and Dhoni were also on the wrong end the last time the two teams played a Test series, when England - on Alastair Cook's first tour as captain - won 2-1 in India in 2012.

Script:

SOUNDBITE (English) MS Dhoni, India captain:

"(For) quite a few of the players this is going to be their first tour to England, but still if you see our Test squad, most of our players have the exposure of playing in South Africa followed by New Zealand, so I think with a few games behind them they will know what the challenges will be. The good thing is we're going a bit early, which means we can take our time getting through the grooves, have a few practice games and then get into the series which is a long series. I don't think it's very usual for us to play a five-Test match series, so overall I think it should be good, the reason being we have enough time to prepare and at the same time the players, they know the challenges they will be facing. So overall it's looking good."

SUPER CAPTION: Duncan Fletcher, former England and current India coach

"There's no doubt about it. Without Kevin Pietersen, I've got the feeling that he's quite a huge blow to them. And then just looking at them, they are in a rebuilding phase as well, so that's what's going to make this tour quite interesting. I do believe, though, they've got some very good batters who've got some good experience at Test level, when you look at (Alastair) Cook and (Ian) Bell, who've scored some big runs up the order there. So that's going to be our major focus, to get them out as cheaply as we can. Their bowling side is still relatively experienced, when you've got (James) Anderson and (Stuart) Broad still bowling there. So they've got some useful players there, we've just got to make sure we go in there and play the best we can. We've shown with play here, we've played some very good cricket in India, we've just got to go there and adapt to the conditions as quickly as possible and try to put them under pressure."