E.R. RAMACHANDRAN asks: Are the current crop of Indian fast bowlers hiding their injuries to make their way into the team for lucrative foreign tours? And are our physios and trainers, and sometimes even the captain if not the selectors, part accomplices in this elaborate charade being played on Indian cricket fans?
Consider this:
# A couple of seasons ago, Harbhajan Singh had not recovered from his back injury completely, but yet was included for a tour and spent the tour mostly as a passenger. It was hinted at the time that captain Sourav Ganguly perhaps had an inkling of this yet took Harbhajan on that tour.
# Ditto Munaf Patel when he went to England last year. He could barely bowl few overs, but was seen hobbling off the field. He started throwing the ball underarm from the boundary line even in ODIs. Munaf had been given a clean chit by the physio who was later questioned by the Board.
# And now, Zaheer Khan. Like a light bulb, he is on-off, every season. In Australia, where fast bowling is the only thing which works for 80% of the match, he is already being sent back at the end of the first Test match itself! Sreesanth, who is still recuperating, is already talking of joining the team for the third Test.
Add to this list of fast bowlers sent into premature retirement like Lakshmipathy Balaji and Ashish Nehra, and you have to wonder: Are our fast bowlers guys overworked or overfeted?
Even now, long after they retired, Javagal Srinath, B.K. Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh look fitter and appear ready to take the five-day strain, given half a chance. So, why are our modern fast bowlers, many of them “trained” at specialist pace academies, so lacking in form or fitness to last an entire tour or a couple of series in succession?
Is it that BCCI is mule-headed and is driving them like a herd of cattle, cramming too many matches in a season and off season too? Or, since there is such a lot of money, are the players deliberately hiding their injuries, faking fitness with the connivance of some of our selectors and/or physios, if not the captain himself?
If it is the former, how come Sri Lanka’s Chaminda Vas and Lasith Malinga, South Africa’s Makhaya Ntini and Andre Nel, not to speak of the assembly-line of Australians, seem to carry on season after season, bowling yards faster than our bowlers and fielding very well too.
What seems to be the problem with our fast bowlers alone that they seem to pick up their returning boarding pass even while alighting on foreign soil? Especially with all the special diets and training exercises and conditioning camps that they have the privilege of?
How can a team plan its strategy with such fragile players? And more importantly how will an opposition side take our chances and claims seriously when it knows fully well that at sooner rather than later one of our key weapons will be headed home?
Photograph: courtesy The Tribune, Chandigarh
Don’t agree with ER.
Both India and Pakistani pacers are prone to injury because of their upbringing, food habit, the way they over-stress them in the dumb pitches of south asia.
Coaches/experts can achieve little when grown up persons go to them for fitness training.
There was one exception: Kapil Dev. But exceptions don’t prove anything. Also, today, players are playing double the number of matches unlike before.
Time has come for us to stop playing cricket- instead embrace football. It has a huge possibility whose 1% is not tapped so far.
At least, it will save huge national GDP that we waste for full day/five days.
here also we have got competition from English pacers who play 2 matches and sit out for 4 matches…. they get injured even if somebody touches them..
I think ER has a point here. Football/Soccer is no walk in the park either. If anything, it is a lot more physical if not drawn out, hence needing more stamina and better fitness. Portly men have graced cricket consistently ; when was the last time you saw a chubby striker in soccer ?
As far as sports in general, India has an endemic incompetence for it continually fails to produce sportsmen of international reckoning. Sans Cricket, just Tennis and Chess have seen some success(spare me the flash in the pans). But for a country of a billion plus, we ought to do better. Abysmal performances in the multi faceted Olympics is a shining example of our incompetent and antiquated systems — we fail in every sport and every category in Olympics.
From sports authorities run by politicians, to the selectors — aka bunch of jokers, we just fail in all aspects. As long as mediocrity and, not meritocracy is the norm and, good encouragement-support system fails to develop, we will continue to suck gloriously, no matter what the sport.
vakra vakravagi bowl maaDdre innen aagatte?
If dietary habits have a role to play, I am curious to know how Srinath, a vegetarian, was fitter than meat-eating Zaheer, Irfan, Munaf, Nehra and others? At his prime Srinath would play both tests and one-dayers and was faster than these dibbly-dobblies. These new fellows can only play one or the other, and not for too long.
@ Prashant , he also ate Churumuri :), the antidote for tiredness or laggardness
Let all readers be aware that Srinath’s pace had to do inherently with the more fast-twtich fibres in his muscles that allowed him to contract and explode at a quicker rate than his other meat-eating team-fellows.
As for injuries, diet plays a really big role in their prevention and is often underrated , even by dieticians and specialists in the field. At a cellular level, what we eat – from High Fructose Corn Syrup to Flax Seed – absorbed / assimilated in some form and impacts muscle tissue and bone. Secondly, injuries are commonplace in today’s cricketing schedules, it’s how each individual fast bowler manages them without sacrificing pace.
I do not think that Indian team has a ‘pace bowler’ in the real sense of the word.
Fast bowlers getting injured or having fitness problems by itself is not so much of a problem. What is needed is recongnizing this as part and parcel of the game and having several bowlers waiting in the wings and having a rehabilitation program. In a way I feel there is slightly better recongnition of this and the team is not hesitating to rest or send back players unlike earlier when bowlers or the team did not disclose injuries.
Hi
If srinath sir can train me for a month or so I can definitely bowl at a speed of more than 150kmph. I am 20yrs old and I am doing BCA from Bangalore.