From Yo-Yo to Bronco test: How India are raising the fitness bar
Kolkata, Oct. 18 -- In all fairness, Rohit Sharma probably didn't deserve the scrutiny that came his way when he chose to continue playing one-dayers. The numbers at least back him.
Thrice in his career has he aggregated yearly strike rates of 110 and above, all of them coming since 2022. This was also the phase when he hit a career-high 67 sixes in one year along with 131 fours, the incredulity of his hitting prowess peaking in the 2023 ODI World Cup that India nearly won. Not even in the Champions Trophy did he slow down, finishing the tournament as the only top order India batter with a strike rate of 100.
But cricket is also a lot about the optics, more so when compounded by the insecurities that come with age. Staying ahead of that curve is partially what kept the Virat Kohli bandwagon alive. There have been excruciatingly long phases where he didn't score fluently, but the lean, mean, focused look may have helped Kohli dodge a few questions. Sharma, however, was never known to be too hung up over how he looked. Till a few airport arrival photos made him question himself.
"There was a lot of talk about him putting on weight and a few images of him coming out of the airport, so it was about changing all of that," Abhishek Nayar, Sharma's friend and former India assistant coach, was quoted as saying on Star Sports.
"The thought process was to do something different. Since we had time on our hands, it was not about maintaining but growth. Growth in regards to his physical structure, growth in regards to his movements. How he viewed himself, how he looked in the mirror and being in a place where he felt fitter and felt like he could move faster and swiftly on the field, even with the bat."
Throughout the years they played together as well, Kohli's contrast with Sharma had a very physical aspect to it - Kohli a chiselled competitor with expressive eyes, eager to prove a point or two at the earliest chance; Sharma more nonchalant and taking on life as it comes.
It wasn't shocking that fitness wasn't Sharma's priority when he took over as captain. For the same cricketer to try and play catch-up at 38 says a lot about the changing concept of fitness, especially in white-ball cricket.
More changes might be ushered in, now that the landscape is dominated by cricketers raised on a steady diet of IPL who still have to play Test cricket despite not having enough first-class grounding. Already some chinks are showing in the bowling department, with more catches being dropped and more fast bowlers reporting injured at the NCA than turning up for seasons at a stretch. Endurance is key these days, with workload management being the buzzword.
This was bound to happen, given the increasing volume of cricket. And no one has had a better measure of the change than Adrian Le Roux, who has now been in charge of the strength and conditioning of different Indian teams across three decades. Yet he feels there are no big differences as far as his objectives are concerned.
"Cricket is a game of skill and we complement that skill with what we do. We try and help players to prolong their career. If you are physically prepared, you can play more seasons. If you look after yourself, a lot of things that we implement to minimise the risk of an injury," said le Roux in a bcci.tv video last month.
To the layman white ball cricket seems easier than red ball cricket, but according to John Gloster - who too has managed the Indian team in the past - there's actually a 30% difference in high-speed running efforts in white ball cricket than in red ball cricket.
"Before 2007, cricket was essentially a two format game," Gloster had told HT in August. "The intensity of the T20 game is so high that it mimics the physical exertions of an ODI."
This new aspect of cricket workload has implications for declaring a player fit for selection, thereby directly influencing the parameters of fitness.
With John Wright taking over in November 2000 came a new fitness culture, around a decade later did the Yo-Yo test make headlines, a few years down the line its qualification mark was raised to 17:1 from 16:1 with a new two-kilometre time trial added as global fitness standard. And now we have the Bronco test, an aerobic capacity test originally designed and devised for rugby.
"We can use it as a training mechanism, and secondly, as a measurement. We get a good idea of where the players are in terms of their aerobic fitness and if we are moving in the right direction," le Roux said in the video.
It isn't as simple as it sounds, but such have been the exacting levels of cricket being played these days that sport appropriate testing and training modality must achieve uncompromising levels. For India to stay dominant, thus, this was the next logical step....
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