Former India Strength and Conditioning coach, Ramji Srinivasan has come up with some great solutions that can help Team India perform better.
Recently, India has faced a storm of injuries to their key players that has affected team combinations for multi-event and bilateral series.
Now only a few players are present in the Indian team who play consistently in all three formats.
Ramji Srinivasan has asked the current Indian team to take some tips from the 2011 World Cup-winning team.
During the 2011 World Cup, none of the players remained injured and that is how India were able to lift the World Cup.
Says Ramji,
See there are a lot of factors involving why injuries happen. Four main factors which we need to address in a holistic way are biological, physical, psychological and socio-cultural. Lot of pointers come under these four parameters. Coming back to injuries, there are many facets to it. When did these injuries start to happen? The mass scale ones involving fast bowlers, or a wicketkeeper or a spin bowler. We need to ask where did it start and why did it start. What triggered this tsunami of injuries is what we need to ask. Basically the source of the injury. How come everyone is becoming injured, which never used to happen before.
Ramji talks on various points such as individual strength, workload management, and communication
According to Ramji, every player is different and needs a different set of fitness rules and different templates as one size fits all is not the solution to the problem.
As I said, individuals are different. You can’t have one template for all the players. Every player needs a different template. If you are going to follow the same template, they will break down in the warm-up match itself. That’s why communication is important. Athlete knowing their body is very important. That’s why programs, right from practice sessions, need to be individualized. You can’t generalize. Times have changed you can’t apply the same principles which you applied 10-15 years back. Lifestyles have changed, mindsets have changed. Lot of things have changed because of lifestyle modifications. You have to adapt and adopt protocols according to need of the hour.
On the other hand, Ramji is aversive to the new fancy term, Workload Management. He is of the opinion that Strength and Conditioning coaches must focus on keeping a player injury free rather than focus on workload management.
He also says that the tips he has provided are very much doable in the current situation and it all depends on how the coaches make use of the latest facilities.
It is very much doable. What has changed now is the mindset has changed. A lot of things have also changed for the positive now. That time we never had so many support staff. We had a physio, a trainer, one massage therapist and two coaches. So no more than 6-7. Now we have 20 people. And there are fantastic facilities wherever you go. There are a lot of pros than cons. BCCI will give you the best of the best. When you ask for the best, they give you the best. They don’t cringe on anything. Nobody can blame BCCI for anything. They want the players to get best of the best. It’s how the support staff uses that for the benefit of the players and the country is of utmost importance.
Ramji also shared his time with the Indian team when he joined them in 2009. He says that from Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina to Dhoni, Sehwag, Sachin, and Gambhir, everyone used to ‘grill him’ when it came to fitness.
Not ask me, they used to grill me because everyone wants to play for the country and it’s my duty to explain what everyday goals are. It started when I joined in 2009. From Virat Kohli to Suresh Raina everybody used to grill me. From Sachin to Gauti to Dhoni to Viru, everybody. It’s my duty to explain to them and if I don’t know, I don’t know. We need to understand that cricket is a team game, not individual game. So synergy has to be among all players so that they embark on the journey and one compliments the other. So that is true fitness for a team.
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