National Cricket Team Players (India)

[prasen9]

The BCCI has introduced a fitness test wrt runtimes for 2km. I think this is a good idea. I do not know what correlation it has with cricket or cricketing ability. But, anything is good. Suresh can tell if the times are useful or not.

New Fitness Test

I am always concerned with Rohit Sharma's potbelly and was concerned Pant's post-COVID potbelly. But, Pant shaped up soon enough once IPL started and shed it to an extent; he is young. So making people run under a particular time is not a bad idea.

[Sin Hombre]

I hate running and even I can run 2kms in 8:30 (around 7 mins a mile for 1.24 miles). I think it is reasonable to say anyone who can't even do this should be dropped.

[suresh]

2K in 8:15-8:30 is not easy for me. I think the younger and fitter players will easily achieve this. However, it is not clear if someone runs 2K in 9 minutes (which is decent) in my book, they become a lesser cricketer. I think that may past cricket players would have failed the test in their prime. I think fitness is important but I am unsure that this test measures that. For cricketers and football players, a combination of 5-10K runs (endurance) and short intervals (speed) might be better suited. Looks like they do the yo-yo test which effectively takes care of the speed part.

[suresh]

I hate running and even I can run 2kms in 8:30 (around 7 mins a mile for 1.24 miles). I think it is reasonable to say anyone who can't even do this should be dropped.

You are good!

[gbelday]

I agree with Suresh here.

I think that test is a recipe for more injuries. You can’t have the same test for everyone. Fitness has to be customized. It also depends on what else they are doing? Are they doing any injury prevention exercises? Are they strengthening their core? Are they stretching enough? Are they warming up and cooling down? Short sprints (intervals) and some 5k endurance runs would be most beneficial.

Who came up with the test? The article says BCCI. Is it a fitness coach within BCCI or a bunch of clueless old folks sitting around the table?

[prasen9]

Gautam, I agree, fully. On the other hand, the way things are in India, it seems that people who are unfit are getting in. So, my question is whether there is some basic fitness requirement that can be universally required of our players so that we do not have to design fitness test and the designer comes under immense pressure or chooses subjective measures or is biased. For example, if a fitness coach/physio designs a test that Kohli fails (or more likely Ganguly would have failed), the fitness coach may not have the courage or the job security to fail Kohli because of our super-star/nepotism culture. So, having some basic requirement would be good. Any thoughts on what that basic criteria should be? For example, if I say the player has to be able to run 22 yards, hold a bat or a catch, you would not argue that that test would cause injuries or is not required, right. So, what is the lowest common denominator for international cricket (and may be different for T20s, LOIs and tests)?

[Kumar]

I am sorry, this is ridiculous! What does running 2 km in 8.5 minute prove! They are quick endurance runner? Are they ever going to do that as part of their game?
Arjuna Ranatunga was one of the quicker runner between wickets when it required!

Baseball has pitchers that are extremely fat! They are not subjected to such idiotic rules! Why should a spinner run 2 Km in 8.5 minutes to prove his fitness!

If u want to insist that a player should run 22 yards in so many much seconds , that is at least reasonable ! And for test players, this may not even make a lot of sense

I understand that player needs to be fit, but potbellied cricketers has always made cricket more colorful!

Prasen, I think form of cricket should have different set of rules! Also, the injuries that we had were more soft tissue injuries! That is clearly on the physio! The players either are not following ipthe regime or regimen is not correctly tailored!

[suresh]

No fitness test can measure the mental fortitude of Pujara or the toughness of Kohli and Siraj playing cricket after their father passed away.

[karr]

I am surprised at the strong reactions.
As a min-bar, this seems to make sense to me. Players need to last a 5 day test - you need to be able to measure endurance for that. i.e. why are you folks constraining the talk to 22 yards? They need to field all day.
The Ranatunga times are long gone. I would wage a bet that Rantatunga, if he were to play today, would coax himself into fitness.

Establishing a bar ahead of time enables players to plan their regimen and beat it. The 2 km bar seems like a low bar to me and that's the primary reason I am comfortable with it. Am I grossly underestimating that?

Please also note that we already have a yoyo test for speed and stamina. The current Indian teams seems to be better off on account of those tests, no?

Once a min-bar is published, no player can complain that this is a sudden foist - plan ahead, beat it comfortably, and make it a non issue.

[Kumar]

I am surprised at the strong reactions.
As a min-bar, this seems to make sense to me. Players need to last a 5 day test - you need to be able to measure endurance for that. i.e. why are you folks constraining the talk to 22 yards? They need to field all day.
The Ranatunga times are long gone. I would wage a bet that Rantatunga, if he were to play today, would coax himself into fitness.

Establishing a bar ahead of time enables players to plan their regimen and beat it. The 2 km bar seems like a low bar to me and that's the primary reason I am comfortable with it. Am I grossly underestimating that?

Please also note that we already have a yoyo test for speed and stamina. The current Indian teams seems to be better off on account of those tests, no?

Once a min-bar is published, no player can complain that this is a sudden foist - plan ahead, beat it comfortably, and make it a non issue.

I am not so sure that 2Km in 8.15 is a mini bar! If u say 2km in 10 minutes, that may be slightly reasonable! How do u define fitness?Is it ability for them to last the day’s play without being winded, I am not sure 2km time trial will achieve that! Is it the ability to last the vigors of a season! Definitely this trial will not achieve that! Ability to bow 160- 200 overs in 4match series without being injured!

Tearing your calf muscle or hamstring while running between the wickets! This will not do that!

U know that cricket is one of the very few sport where a batsman essentially starts running the minute he goes to bat! They don’t appear to keep themself warmed up while waiting int he dressing room! Are there routines that batsman could follow to keep themself ready for sprinting? They have less than 5 minutes between prior dismissal to get them warmed up!

To me, all this test may show is that who are your better middle distance runners in your team!
I don’t have a problem with a fitness test, but they have to cater to idiosyncrasies of this game and half baked schemes without proper trials at domestic levels is just stupid! Gather data and observe people who don’t match their level! After observing players and their performance, may be u could then decide if this makes sense!

I agree that Ranatunga may not have shown the fitness, but I have seen very few batsman(of his time) who were better between wickets than him! He was deceptively quick!

[prasen9]

The comparison to a pitcher is not really apt. A pitcher has to run maybe a few times at max to first base and even then it does not matter much. A pitcher largely does not have to catch and field. So, pot-bellied baseball pitchers are fine. Cricket bowlers, on the other hand, have to bowl, and bat, and field. There is no space for unfit players. Fitness = runs/wickets. So, no, I am not going to condone potbellied players. That means our system is not working. We are not optimizing our chances to win. At the end of the day, pace bowlers especially have to run in and bowl fast. A lot of them lost their potency when they are tired. Or get abdominal strains when they are overworked.

The question I have asked and is a valid question is whether running that distance in that time correlated to any cricketing gains. That is the question to ask.

[suresh]

@Karr The 2K test achieves nothing. It cannot be a minimum bar as the times asked for 2K are too high IMO. That is why I was suggesting 5-10K runs (with not crazy but reasonable times) to test endurance. The yo-yo test is good one for cricket. As Kumar correctly points out, the tests must relate to the game involved.

As a long-distance runner myself, I understand what it takes to run at various paces. There is also a huge difference between kids in India and the US. Just about every high school kid who runs cross-country in a generic US school will easily run 5K under 20 minutes. I doubt if many kids in India can do that. At my university, the best runners do 18 minutes (rare ones go under that and are in contention for medals at the inter IIT meet where medals need a sub 17' 5K). Guys in the football team can run 5K under 25 minutes after excluding guys who also run track.

[prasen9]

So then unless you are Sin Hombre, this is another hair-brained test with no real cricketing gains.

Here's the argument for it. Time Trial What do you think of these arguments?

[Sin Hombre]

My take is what suresh alluded to in his previous post. Tonnes of people I know can run a 25 min 5k with some training and do so in our annual corporate challenge (my knees hurt with running so I avoid participating) and these are people in their 20s/30s/40s doing a desk job.

Asking a professional sportsperson to do 2k in 08:30 does not sound extreme to me at all. We should expect people wanting to represent India be able to match an average fit high school student in the US (the actual runners will be way faster).

Maybe make it a 25min 5k instead of the 08:30 2k.

[suresh]

Maybe make it a 25min 5k instead of the 08:30 2k.

This makes a lot more sense.