While the battle against COVID-19 or coronavirus is still on, the world is now focusing on resuming the stopped life slowly but safely. The fielding coach of the Indian men’s national cricket team, R Sridhar, recently opened up how much time could be required for the Indian cricketers to become the match ready.
The novel coronavirus has forced to postpone the busy schedule of recent cricket events. Due to this pandemic, we are missing this game since last March. While the Indian team last time played an international match in last February, their first game against South Africa in the three-match home ODI series was abandoned due to rain on 12th March and the other two matches of that series were postponed amid coronavirus outbreak.
While the IPL 2020 (initial date between 29th March and 24th May 2020) has been postponed for the indefinite period, India’s upcoming FTP schedules are majorly doubtful in this crisis. But now the Indian government is easing the lockdown process, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is now starting to think how to resume the training camps that will help the players to get ready for the game.
R Sridhar believes that the Indian players can be match ready if they get the preparation time for at least four-six weeks. He has claimed that the fast bowlers need a bit more time to get match ready than the batsmen.
Sridhar told PTI, “I think if you have a camp for 4-6 weeks, we can bring them to peak match readiness…fast bowler needs around 6 weeks, batsmen might take a bit less time.
“Once we get a date (on the start of national camp) from the BCCI and approved by the government of India, we can start working backwards (starting from scratch). The challenge is to proceed in the right phases as players can get excited when they play after 14 or 15 weeks.
“It’s pertinent that we move in the right manner forward. Don’t want to look too much ahead.”
Sridhar also clarified that they needed to follow the system, starting with the progressive workload, or otherwise the players could be injured due to the sudden spike in workload.
Talking about this, Sridhar added, “First phase, it will be ‘low volume-low intensity’, followed by ‘moderate volume-low intensity’, ‘high volume-moderate intensity’ and then starts ‘high volume-high intensity’ training. This is how we will go.”
R Sridhar clarifies the process of low-volume-low intensity training
The 49-year-old former Hyderabad left-arm spinner, Sridhar, also explained how the low-volume-low intensity training would work.
He claimed, “Maybe the fast bowlers will bowl two overs from half or quarter run-up. The deliveries will be bowled at 20 or 30 percent intensity. For a fielder, it will be at the maximum, six throws over 10 metres or 6 throws over 20 metres at 40 to 50 per cent intensity.
“For a batsman, it will start with five to six minutes of batting against moderate pace bowling.
“For catchers, it will start with semi-soft balls, intensity will be slow and volumes will be less. Then we can slowly pick it up as we cross one phase after another.”
Sridhar also added that the match-intensity training could begin from the fourth week which would help the players to slowly reform for the match ready. The fielding coach also said that the timeline for the match readiness can vary player by player.