SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
Former Indian team medium pace bowler Balwinder Singh Sandhu stirred up a hornet’s nest recently when he said that present day bowlers lack fitness and stamina when compared to the bowlers of the past.
Sandhu played an important role in the Indian team that won the World Cup in 1983. In the final match he clean bowled the famous West Indies opener Gordon Greenidge. That dismissal by Sandhu started the slide that ultimately led to India’s victory.
A few days ago Sandhu created a controversy when he lashed out at the fitness levels of the present day Indian bowlers. After India’s attacking spearhead Jasprit Bumrah was again injured during the Border Gavaskar series, it was reported that the fast bowler had been overburdened and there was a need to reduce his workload.
It is not only Bumrah who is often suffering injury. Mohammed Shami has emerged after a long layoff due to injury, Hardik Pandya was on the injured list for a long time, Prasidh Krishna had lumbar spine injury, Shivam Mavi had stress fractures and several other players too have suffered from time to time. Experts say that there is a need to reduce the work stress on these bowlers.
Theory belittled
But Sandhu belittled the heavy workload theory, especially in the case of Bumrah.
“Workload? How many overs did he bowl? About 150 odd overs right? And how many matches did he play? Five matches or to be specific 9 innings right? That comes to about 16 overs per inning. And even those 16 overs were not bowled in one go. He did it in spells. Is that a big deal? In my time we had to bowl twice as much as Bumrah,” said Sandhu.
The veteran bowler thought that if a bowler cannot bowl a minimum of twenty overs per innings then he should forget about playing Test cricket.
Looking at the issue objectively, one has to admit that Sandhu has made a valid point. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, bowlers in Test matches used to bowl 30 or 40 overs per inning and nobody ever considered workload problems. It was something that was expected of a bowler of international standard.
Longest spell in history
India’s famous leg spinner Narendra Hirwani holds the record for the longest spell ever bowled in Test cricket. In 1990 Hirwani bowled 59 consecutive overs against England at the Oval. When Bishen Singh Bedi took his career-best haul of 7 for 98 against Australia in Kolkata, he bowled 50 overs although not in one spell. In the same match, India’s legendary off-spinner Erapalli Prasanna bowled 49 overs.
In first class cricket the longest spell ever bowled was by James Iremonger of Nottinghamshire who bowled 66 overs at a stretch in 1914 against Hampshire.
One may argue that Hirwani, Bedi, and Prasanna were all spin bowlers, and therefore their task was less strenuous than that of Bumrah. But the second example, that of Iremonger, is different. Iremonger was a medium-pace bowler. To be accurate, he was an all-rounder so he also had the added job of having to play as long as possible while batting. When not playing cricket he was a footballer and was good enough to represent England. The workload that his body endured is mind-boggling by today’s standards.
Reason for decline
Different theories have been put forward for the decline in the stamina and endurance of present-day cricketers. Some experts feel that the proclivity of limited-overs cricket has reduced the burden on bowlers and they do not expect to bowl long spells. So they don’t train themselves like their predecessors did.
Former Australian fast bowler Brad Hogg has said this about Indian bowlers: “Once they get that IPL contract, everything else falls out of the window. They don’t train themselves to play in the longer format of the game. They don’t develop that endurance factor.”
Perhaps the secret lies in the training methods adopted by players of the past and those of the present. Kapil Dev had once pointed out that during his days there were no gym workouts. “We used to run a lot and do stretching. That was our exercise. Nowadays players go to the gym and lift weights and maybe that is why their back muscles are overworked,” he said.
India’s former hockey captain Aslam Sher Khan had told this correspondent a similar thing many years ago. “For me, the best workout is playing hockey. I don’t do any other exercise,” he had said. So perhaps it is time for the BCCI’s trainers to take a re-look at the exercise schedule that is being implemented on the players. Maybe it is the heavy gym workouts that are increasing the workload on the bowlers and creating more injuries.
SOURCE : SIASAT
