Sport

Chappell to be RCA advisor

NEW DELHI: Former India coach Greg Chappell will be an advisor to the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA) to help the association in establishing the association’s centre of excellence in Jaipur.

To be called the Rajasthan Cricket Association’s Centre of Excellence, the academy will be operational this October, according to a press release by the RCA on Monday. Chappell will be assisted by Ian Fraser.

Announcing this, the RCA president Lalit Modi said, “The joining of Greg and Ian will take the Rajasthan Cricket Academy to the forefront of development of cricket not just in Rajasthan, but across India and the entire cricket-playing world.”

Chappell was delighted with the assignment. “To be involved with identifying and training the talent of the future in Rajasthan is a wonderful opportunity,” he said. The academy, said the release, will have five indoor pitches, a full video analysis system and 24 outdoor practice wickets. It will accommodate 70 students and will have a state-of-the-art gymnasium. “In the first phase, we will be recruiting 110 students in five batches of 22 from Rajasthan,” Modi said. “The programme we have designed with Greg and Ian is quite different from all existing programmes, and we hope that the method we deploy will change the way we train our future cricketers,” he added.

Chappell, the release concluded, would introduce new techniques and methods because “first class and international cricket is becoming demanding for the players. “Training methods of the past will not be suitable for the player of the future who will need to be fitter, stronger and more resilient, more flexible.”

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu