Wounded India paying heavy price

A glance through the social media pages of Indian cricketers suggests that they - save for Rohit Sharma’s uncompromising dad-bod - look the part of an athlete. The operative word is ‘look’.

Usually furnished with beach-ready abs and muscles unbecoming of a cricketer in need of pliancy, Indian cricketers are often confused with athletes in the conversation for the fittest in the world.

Virat Kohli surely deserves to be on the list for having transformed himself and the culture perpetuated by his anti-weightlifting predecessors. The others, not so much.

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Kohli, at 34, goes beyond looking like an athlete, he is one. The rest continue to work towards looking the part, not being it. Perhaps, and this is where the wisdom of the support staff should come in, they’re conditioned to believe that a single-digit body-fat percentage is enough. Functionality to be damned.

The result of such conflicting optics is that a side that looks damn-near spartan on the cover of a magazine could barely field a proper side against Bangladesh because a whole host of injuries plagued them.

This meant Bangladesh would go on to post a five-run win on Wednesday evening against a team on crutches to claim the bilateral series with one game left. This loss comes on trail of the series loss to New Zealand.

While an obviously failing 50-over mantra of the past has contributed to India losing said series and slipping to fifth in the ICC’s ODI rankings, it’s impossible to ignore the role of pedantic injury/ workload management measures.

Besides needing Rohit Sharma to bat through the pain of a split-webbing after coming in at No.9, India were without a strike bowler after losing Deepak Chahar to a stiff hamstring three overs into the game. Chahar did come around to bat, just as Rohit did, to try and save face, but it was all too embarrassing to call heroic.

Chahar only just returned to the side after dealing with a torn quadricep and a bad back for a year, it was a process that saw him spend more time at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru than at home.

Then there was the disconcerting case of Kuldeep Sen. The 26-year-old from Madhya Pradesh got his first shot with the Indian team and showed promise, picking up two wickets for 37 runs in five overs. He is now sidelined with a back injury.

Prior to this, Mohammed Shami came a cropper with a shoulder niggle, forcing the management to bring in Umran Malik for this series.

Those are three very unavailable pacers for the foreseeable future, and all three were lost to the team in the span of a couple of weeks.

Rohit will also miss out on the third ODI and possibly even the Tests depending on the nature of his injury and recovery, but at least in his case, it was an impact injury. The rest are not fit enough.

KL Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah, Washington Sundar, Harshal Patel, the list goes on when it comes to those prone to injuries. They all look good, but…

“We need bespoke workouts and strength and conditioning protocols in place,” says Ramji Srinivasan, the former Indian team trainer. “A lot of these players are training like footballers or basketball players, not like cricketers. We need cricket-specific training, but that’s not happening in India. We get carried away, and that’s why I don’t always blame the athletes.

“Someone in the team needs to be accountable for this. It’s not the management or the coach, this comes down to the support staff - trainers, physios, masseurs, strength and conditioning coach, nutritionists...”

Then there’s the not-so-small issue of transparency. While the team puts out enough content pertaining to birthday parties and such, they don't dole out information regarding players and their injury status.

There is no information as to why Rishabh Pant was sent home, apparently on the advice of medical team. There hasn’t been an update regarding Bumrah for a few months. Nothing to explain why Shubman Gill was rested when he had played just one completed ODI (off three) on the tour of New Zealand, and is, more importantly, all of 23 years old.

“This is absurd,” said a former Indian pacer. “I’m getting workload management fatigue (laughs). We mollycoddle our players and they break down from underutilisation on the field and overexertion at the gym. They are training like weightlifters and models, all about the aesthetic these days, this is not functional.”

Evidently, not all is well in the camp, what with Chetan Sharma being sacked as the chief selector a few weeks ago. And it won’t come as a surprise if coach Rahul Dravid cops the blow for the side’s performances in recent months.

Is it fair? Perhaps not, at least not when it comes to poor management of ‘athletes’.