Long ago, when Dr Darshan Kumar Tandon was assisting the Indian cricket group as its 1st fitness professional, he took exception to a senior player not finishing his operating drills. Dr Tandon took his complaint to group manager Raj Singh Dungarpur, who handled the challenge with a snappy wisecrack. “Don’t worry about him. He will score centuries. Better to focus on the lesser mortals.”
Raj bhai was a goldmine of cricket stories, apart from his cricketing acumen and administrative expertise, and his passing in 2009 was a large loss for these who knew him at close quarters. Dr Tandon, who died in 2015, was an exceptional conditioning professional, one of the early birds in that field in India, whose outlook towards fitness oozed modernity.
Fitness in cricket has a difficult edge, which does not adhere to the template of any other outside sport. The Indian cricket group in the 1980s for instance, didn’t have also quite a few organic athletes – Kapil Dev and Mohammad Azharuddin have been exceptions, though Maninder Singh deserved an honourable mention. But the batsmen could bat for hours and they hardly cooled their heels beneath the pretext of batting lengthy, when the group fielded. The bowlers bowled lengthy spells on unresponsive pitches in India – left-arm spinner Raghuram Bhat bowled 94 overs in an innings for Karnataka at the 1981-82 Ranji Trophy final against Delhi, which went into the sixth day – and they hardly ever broke down. They have been supremely cricket match.
Cricket has normally been a ability-based sport. Has it changed sufficient to make batting and/or bowling expertise secondary, with fitness taking precedence? During an interview with 4 years ago, Sri Lanka’s World Cup-winning former captain Arjuna Ranatunga had addressed the challenge. “I think if you don’t have skill, then it’s better for someone to get some models and allow them to play cricket. You need skill and talent as far as cricket is concerned. Fitness is very important, but I don’t agree with some of these comments made by some of the people who haven’t played cricket. Overall, it’s all about cricket talent and the most important thing is cricket fitness. I think what we lack at the moment; some of our players are very fit, but they don’t have cricket fitness,” Ranatunga had stated.
He also elaborated on cricket fitness. “When you are a batsman, you need to bat for a longer period. When you are a bowler, you need to bowl certain number of overs. Some of the fast bowlers who played under me, they used to bowl at least one-and-a-half hours for a day and at least three-four days for a week, and they never had any injuries at that time. So that’s where people should realise what is cricket fitness. There were players even under my captaincy who could run 25 rounds at the SSC. But they couldn’t bowl more than four-five overs.”
Cut to March 11, 2021… At a press conference ahead of India’s T20I opener against England, Virat Kohli told reporters in no uncertain terms that fitness is non-negotiable. “Individuals have to understand and appreciate the kind of system that’s been created for the Indian cricket team. We should operate at very high levels of fitness and skills. There’s a reason why this is the top of the ladder when it comes to playing cricket in our country. And yeah, you would obviously expect players to abide by what’s required to be a part of Team India. There should not be any space for any compromise in that regard.”
This came right after two Indian spinners, Varun Chakravarthy and Rahul Tewatia, failed to clear the fitness tests. The Indian group has two fitness test norms – a player desires to either clear the yo-yo test exactly where the level has been upgraded to 17.1 from 16.1 or run two kilometres in eight minutes and 15 seconds for rapid bowlers and 8:30 for the rest.
Varun is a mystery spinner who had an great final season for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Indian Premier League (IPL). He could have been pretty a handful for England, currently spin-spooked right after the Test series, in the T20Is. But he is out of the Indian squad now right after failing his fitness test.
Base yo-yo score for most international teams is greater than the prescribed mark for the Indian players even right after the upgrade. Australia had set the minimum level at 19 prior to discounting with the yo-yo test. England and New Zealand, also, have 19. Both South Africa and Pakistan have set it at 17.4. As far as the Indian group is concerned, when a fundamental fitness requirement has been place in spot, players are anticipated to adhere to it. In terms of fitness, the captain himself leads by instance.
T20s have created the game a lot more rapid-paced. Players these days do not have the luxury of an off-season. Playing all 3 formats round the year is critical workload and top rated level fitness is needed to carry on with the pace and demands of contemporary-day cricket. As the Indian group head coach Ravi Shastri stated at a press conference final week, throughout his time, India used to have 8-12 Test matches in a year. Now it is totally distinctive. Between December 2020 and March 2021, India have played eight Tests inside 75 days. From that viewpoint, fitness has come to be supremely crucial and a comparison with the previous would be a small off the mark.
All stated and accomplished, there really should be some flexibility. Fitness is non-negotiable all ideal, but it shouldn’t be the foremost criterion for the Indian group eligibility. A player’s fitness can be upgraded even right after integrating him into the squad. Over 144 years one aspect of cricket hasn’t changed it nevertheless remains a ability-based sport.