Separate meetings for bowlers, batsmen; 1 hr net to beat heat

Fatullah : The Indian team on Tuesday rested their bowlers during the hour-long net session at the Khan Saheb Osman Ali Stadium on the eve of their one-off Test match against Bangladesh, starting today. “The humidity is killing and the coaching staff thought that the boys should not stress themselves too much in this heat and hence we trained for an hour today. The bowling unit was rested as they will have a job in hand tomorrow,” a source close to the team management told PTI, explaining the reason for short duration of training. Another interesting aspect in team’s planning and preparation was separate meetings for the batsmen as well as the bowlers — a concept which of late has not been employed. “The bowling unit had a separate meeting where coach Bharath Arun addressed them while the batsmen were addressed by Ravi Shastri. The boys are really charged up despite the heat and humidity. The batsmen and the bowlers have been specifically briefed about the basic strategy going into the match,” the source informed. During Sourav Ganguly’s tenure as captain, there used to be a ‘Batting Captain’, Bowling Captain’ and ‘Fielding captain’ — something that the team members used to designate amongst themselves. Even in 2012 IPL, the Delhi Daredevils used to have a specific bowlers’ meeting where they would discuss the previous match and also talk about the strategy for the upcoming match. It has been reliably learnt that both Shastri and Virat Kohli are looking at the option of playing a third seamer or an extra spinner as the pitch despite a grass cover seems to be a flat deck which has been the nature of the 22-yard strip in Fatullah over the years. PTI