A lot of discussions have started at the decision of the Indian team’s physical trainer to take the Indian squad out of the Bangalore city limits to a training facility where they will be able to train and work without any outside distraction. The TV channels and the papers have been full of speculation as to what exactly the players will be doing. There’s talk of the team doing rock climbing, boating and God knows what else. Of course only an Indian cricket squad will get everybody up feverishly at the kind of training methods used to get it into top condition. These methods have been tried before by other teams but apart from the Australian nobody has kept up a winning streak. While we should all look at different methods tried with an open mind as to the usefulness for getting the players into top physical shape when the talk is about getting the players to bond is a bit naïve. I mean if the players who have been pretty much together as a team for years now, with the odd dropout and the odd newcomer in, has not bonded by now then they never will. Still it will be interesting to see how the whole exercise adds up and if it helps the players then great.
More than the various exercise and training options that the team is undergoing, it is important to know who makes the call on these and also who makes the decision on when a training camp should start or how long it should be. Is it a decision of the selectors or just one selector? Is it a decision of the support staff and again just one member of the support staff? Is it a decision of the coach? Or the captain? Or the BCCI President? Or the BCCI Secretary? Or the BCCI Working Committee? The reason these questions are necessary is because who decides the optimum length of a training session? Who decides that physical conditioning should take precedence over cricket skills training? And also who decides that the players after their physical training can go back home for a break and then come back for the cricket skills camp? The BCCI is a rich body but surely it is a total waste of public money that players do all the rock climbing, etc. and then undergo the travails of waiting for rain delayed flights at various airports and go home for two days and then travel all the way back to Bangalore. It is certainly not a bright idea to go home just for two days and then come back to the same place again. They may as well stay in Bangalore where without the pressure of the team curfews, there is likelihood of a greater bonding than in the intensity of the physical conditioning camp where each player will be looking to complete the task given to him. The gap may be because the coach is coming back after a well deserved holiday but then the physical conditioning camp could have started a few days later and thus saved the player the trouble of traveling back and forth. Those who have had to endure long waits at airports know how stressful it can be and that’s why it could have been a good idea to have kept the boys in Bangalore, given them a couple of days or longer break and then start the cricket specific camp. And don’t forget the lakhs it would have saved for the BCCI in air ticket expenses.
And pray tell me what is going to happen to those guys who are unable to cope up with the new methods of rock climbing, etc. apart from being the butt of some good natured leg-pulling by teammates is anything going to happen to them? Some of them may not be able to do any of the new training exercises but are absolutely brilliant in their respective cricketing discipline of batting, bowling? So are they going to be dropped because they couldn’t climb a rock? That’s unthinkable isn’t it? Every player is different and has different methods of coping with the physical demands of the sport, so a standard training method does not always work.
From personal experience I know that I could never do laps of the ground like some others could and so I had decided my own methods to meet the demands of international cricket and to have played 16 years without missing too many matches with muscular injuries does say that it wasn’t entirely wrong. Fortunately the trainers then though disapproving at first were understanding and realized that I wasn’t shirking but simply unable to do it because of physical limitations and that I was compensating by doing my other exercises. In the current scenario there will be more than one certainty who will be unable to meet the training requirements but by sheer cricketing ability and performance cannot be censured. Mind you this is not only about the special training methods being tried out but even normal training methods where these certainties struggle to do what some other younger players do with ease but that in any way does not take anything away from their cricketing capabilities. One thing is for definite that among the seniors the skipper Rahul Dravid will be the first to do all that is asked of him for among the seniors he is the fittest of the lot and has observed the fitness regime throughout his career and is thus able to meet the extra demands that the team makes of him.
