Date:01/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/01/stories/2008100162362400.htm

Sport - Cricket

Indians fine-tune skills

Principal Correspondent

— Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

NEW ROUTINE: India coach Gary Kirsten serves to Rahul Dravid in order to re-calibrate his reaction time to the speed of a tennis ball.

Bangalore: Coach Gary Kirsten lobbing up a red-coloured tennis ball and quickly slamming the racquet on it to send it careening towards Rahul Dravid was an interesting sidelight as the preparatory camp made steady progress at the Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Tuesday.

With the players split into four nets and batsmen toying with the options of junior State bowlers, Indian bowlers, Kirsten’s tennis serves and a bowling machine, the mood was set for fine-tuning skills that are critical in the run-up to the Test series against the visiting Aussies.

Setting the tempo

The day’s tempo was set when Sehwag patted back Munaf Patel’s delivery and cricket ruled though the spat between the two at the recent Irani Trophy match served as a dramatic backdrop. Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan and even bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad turned their arm over as Sehwag and Dravid shared first strike.

Dravid then moved to the third net and as Kirsten swivelled back and started serving hard from the bowling crease, all eyes were glued to a new routine that was obviously aimed at re-calibrating a batsman’s reaction time to the speed of a tennis ball.

Kirsten slammed hard and his serves were relentless as Dravid coped with them, with technical exactitude being his watchword. Meanwhile, Sehwag squared up to the bowling machine in the adjoining net and spanked a few with ‘watch it’ ringing aloud from scampering fielders. Kirsten then discarded the racquet and started pelting the ball hard from about 18 yards and Dravid mixed watchful eyes with soft hands.

V.V.S. Laxman and Mohammad Kaif then had their stints in all the nets with Kirsten repeating his tennis-serves and also spending time working on Laxman’s footwork.

Later, the second batch of Sachin Tendulkar, M.S. Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma and R.P. Singh attended the nets while the first batch had a session with mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton.

Meanwhile, Kumble also had a long hard look at the pitch being prepared for the first Test here from October 9 and had a chat with chief curator Narayan Raju and New Zealand curator Phillips who is working on the turf’s drainage system.