XtraTime Web Desk: India medium pacer Shardul Thakur on Saturday became the first contracted cricketer of BCCI to start training outdoor following the guidelines set by the Central Government during Lockdown 4. The guidelines permit sportspersons to train individually in sports complexes after taking required permissions.
It is learnt that the Mumbai bowler who is also a C grade cricketer of the board has not taken the required permission from Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to start training outdoor. It is pre-requisite for any contracted cricketer to seek the green signal from BCCI before starting their individual training outdoor.
Shardul opted to train in Palghar district which is a non red zone on Saturday. He was part of the net session held at the Palghar Dahanu Taluka District Sports Association Ground. Other India cricketers staying in Mumbai like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Shreyas Iyer have not started training outdoors yet, even after the government relaxed the overall restriction on Sunday. More importantly, the state of Maharashtra has been one of the worst hit states in the country as far as the number of COVID-19 cases is concerned.
Another India cricketer Washington Sundar too resumed training outdoor at a local ground in Chennai. The off spinner returned to training with his father M Sundar on Saturday.
Meanwhile the International Cricket Council (ICC) has released a format specific training for bowlers. In its latest guidelines, ICC has stated that a test bowler would require minimum 8 to 12 weeks of preparation period, the final 4-5-week period would involve match intensity bowling. It might differ for ODI and T20I bowlers who would require a minimum 5-8 weeks preparation time of which the last three weeks would involve match intensity bowling.
In a guidelines released by ICC, it states, “These are dependent on a multifactorial assessment with age of bowlers, injury history, bowling technique and speed and lifetime overs, amongst others.”
With no international cricket for the last couple of months, most of the cricketers have been stuck at home and have done only basic indoor training.