Over the last two years, Team India has been deeply disturbed by the frequent breakdown of Indian pacers, be it Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya or Shardul Thakur. The latest is Deepak Chahar.
BCCI Response
BCCI has been trying to reduce the recurrence of these frequent breakdowns. Chairman of selectors MSK Prasad cited the amount of cricket played by these modern day cricketers as the reason for this breakdown.
“You have to understand that these players play a lot of matches. Even Chahar had been constantly giving his all for Rajasthan in tournaments like Syed Mushtaq Ali between two international series. His injury got aggravated during the last ODI series against West Indies” Prasad said on Monday.
BCCI had bought wearable Athlete Management System (AMS) devices to monitor the workload of the centrally contracted players. BCCI has 25 contracted players and has around 30 devices. Chahar, for example, is one of the many upcoming pacers who are not part of that pool who are constantly monitored.
However, the National Cricket Academy has a total pool of around 50 cricketers whose workload is being monitored in various other ways.
Players not satisfied with NCA
Earlier this month both Bumrah and Pandya underwent training under Delhi Capitals trainer Rajnikanth Sivagnanam rather than heading to the NCA as India trainer Nick Webb was busy with the team.
Before that Bhuvneshwar Kumar was diagnosed with a sports hernia. The diagnosis raised question mark over the team of specialists working at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) as they had recently given him a clean chit. Bhuvneshwar has been at the NCA on and off post the World Cup as he has looked to gain 100 per cent fitness. But the team at the NCA failed to spot the issue and just two games into his return to the national side against Windies he started complaining of discomfort.
The duo of Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah refused to undergo rehabilitation at the NCA post injury.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that a player has had to face this sort of an issue at the NCA. Wriddhiman Saha episode is there for all to see and now we have a scenario where Bhuvi and Chahar will miss a crucial series against New Zealand and we all know what they brings to the table in conditions which aid swing and seam. They will only be back in time for the Indian Premier League.
If BCCI wants to continue to have a fiery pace attack at its disposal, it would have to come up with a system that will monitor pacers better.