Gentle work-out for pacer Zaheer

The left-arm seamer, who suffered a hamstring injury on the opening day and never returned to resume his bowling after walking off the field at Lord’s, went through a light exercise drill under the watchful eyes of physio Ashish Kaushik.

Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has already made it clear that it’s unlikely he would be risking the half-fit bowler in the second Test beginning here on Friday. And from what one could make out of Zaheer’s routine on the day, the think-tank isn’t really rushing the 33-year-old paceman as yet, with only a day left for the start of the second match. “There’s definitely some improvement (in Zaheer’s condition), but we will take a call on him tomorrow evening,” said team manager Anirudh Choudhry.

In a ‘work-out’ that lasted about 25 minutes, Zaheer started off with a walk around the park and then jogged about a lap with the physio in tow. He then performed some knee lifts and followed it up with ‘swivel-running’ for a couple of stretches. The physio then put him through some running – ascending and descending -- with cones in place before the bowler wound up his day. The Mumbai bowler took frequent water breaks between his exercises but looked in jovial mood as he joked around with Yuvraj Singh and VVS Laxman.  

Among others, Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid didn’t bat while Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar stayed away from bowling. Praveen, though, had a longish bat in the ‘nets’ with some of the support staff donning the bowlers’ roles. Harbhajan Singh, who had a forgettable outing at Lord’s, largely restricted himself to throw downs even as S Sreesanth and Munaf Patel sweated it out with extended bowling sessions.

It was encouraging to see Sachin Tendulkar spend considerable time at the nets.