Over the past year or two, Team India has experienced the most prolonged injury issues. It hasn’t been a great time for the Men in Blue in terms of fitness, whether it be partly related to the pace bowlers getting cramps or strains or other players getting serious injuries like knee or back.
The injuries affected the team in the T20 World Cup when they were without two of their key players, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja. Jadeja is on his way back after being selected for Saurashtra’s team in the Ranji Trophy, but Bumrah won’t be participating in the action for another couple of weeks.
Due to a recurring back injury, Bumrah, who was selected for the Sri Lanka ODI series, was forced to skip the first two Test matches against Australia. Former India all-rounder and World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev went into great detail about why pacers are suffering injuries so frequently and how they can prevent them.
Kapil stated that the exhausting cricket schedule is the primary reason for a large number of injuries. While talking to Gulf News, Kapil said, “Now the season extends to more than 10 months. The more you play the more injuries will happen. Cricket is not a simple game. One has to be athletic, use all the muscles, and play on different ground conditions, softness, and hardness. Adapting to everything is not so easy, it takes a toll on the body. So you crack.”
Talking about the prevention of those injuries, Kapil came up with a golden piece of advice for the bowlers. Only bowling, but carefully, Kapil said, can help them maintain their fitness; nothing else can.
He explained, “The more you bowl in the net, the more your muscle will start developing. Today, I am told that the pacers are allowed to bowl only 30 balls. That’s one reason. When they take so much stress to play at the professional level, then the body starts cracking. They have to bowl more than anything else.”
