At the end of the 1950 English season, however, he ventured abroad for the first time, taking part in a Commonwealth tour of India and Sri Lanka and opening the batting in all five of the representative games. He had some success on the tour, scoring one century, the only one of the 50 centuries in his career not to be made for Somerset. Perhaps more typically, he was homesick and unhappy: "At first I wondered whether I'd picked up a bug. But it was purely mental," he said in a tape transcribed in his biography. Lighter by about 12 kg, he struggled for runs more than usually in the 1951 season, and took a long break from cricket in July, returning to some form afterwards.