India Unique Practices To Face Pakistan

[kissan]

The Indian cricket team have devised some unique ways of training for ICC events in recent times and they are employing one such method in their build-up for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. They are tying out a 'two-bench' theory to counter the pace and bounce of Pakistani bowlers in their World Cup opener. The idea behind the innovation is to get well-equipped to counter the threat that 7-feet-tall Pakistani paceman Mohammed Irfan could pose.

During the last World T20 in Bangladesh, Indian bowlers were seen bowling to a 10-feet tall batting mannequin to develop their skills in channel bowling. This time the batsmen devised a unique throwdown session using two small benches.

After Virat Kohli practised at the main nets, he went to the corner of the St Peter's Main Oval ground to get some throwdowns from the team's specialist Raghavendra. The throwdown expert was told to bowl one short, which Kohli would move back and pull effortlessly. It was followed by a fuller throwdown in order to counter the pitched-up delivery.

Once he had taken sufficient throwdowns, Kohli, and later Ajinkya Rahane, went to the adjacent net where two small benches of around 20 inches in height were kept side by side. Assistant coach Sanjay Bangar stood on one of the benches with the throwdown equipment and then stepped on the other to throw balls from a good height.

The logic behind such a practice method was to get an idea of the steep bounce that Irfan could generate from just short of good length. Bangar, standing on the bench, sent down deliveries from a height of 10 feet, a feet more than the height from which Irfan is expected to deliver.

It was Kohli, who spent maximum time at the nets and batted more than an hour in the two nets put together. Both Duncan Fletcher and team director Ravi Shastri kept a close eye as Kohli batted.

The Indian team's practice session was segregated into specific areas that players concentrated on. Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni arrived an hour into the session as he had taken a morning flight from Melbourne to reach Adelaide. Dhoni batted mostly against slow bowlers like R Ashwin, Axar Patel, Ravindra Jadeja and some young boys from the South Australian High Performance Centre.

The fielding session under R Sridhar also had its own unique touch to it. Sridhar made the trio of Ashwin, Mohammed Shami and Stuart Binny throw from the deep. The idea was to judge how quickly they reached the ball while the fielding coach also worked on perfecting their pick-up and throw. "I want to see the power guys," Sridhar shouted as Shami ran for the ball.

Later Sridhar had a 'position specific session' with Suresh Raina and Shikhar Dhawan. Raina is expected to field at either point or cover point. Accordingly, an imaginary fielding set-up was done with Sridhar playing the cut shot - either square cut or back cut and Raina was diving on both sides to stop the balls. The same drill was repeated for Dhawan.

[sam86]