The Covid-19 pandemic brought about an abrupt halt in international cricket. The sport which usually sees only a week or two\u2019s break between series was completely halted for months due lockdowns imposed by various governments. After months of staying indoors, players were finally allowed to practice outdoors to work on their fitness. International cricket also made its return last week with West Indies travelling to England for a three-match Test series.<\/p>\n
However, there are still doubts lingering over the fitness of the fast bowlers in India. They weren\u2019t able to maintain their practice routines during the previous months due to the countrywide lockdown imposed to contain the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. And that has former pacer Irfan Pathan concerned.<\/p>\n
The former medium pacer feels that Indian pacers will take atleast four to six weeks to be up to speed after this extended hiatus.<\/p>\n
While pacer Shardul Thakur resumed training in May in Boisar in Maharashtra last month, Rishabh Pant, Suresh Raina too have recently hit the nets in Ghaziabad.<\/p>\n
Among others, Cheteshwar Pujara, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami and Ishant Sharma too have resumed training.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, I am really worried about the fast bowlers,\u201d said Pathan, who has played 29 Tests and 120 ODIs for India, on Star Sports\u2019 show Cricket Connected.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing forward, they might need 4-6 weeks to get going themselves. It\u2019s a tough job and if you are bowling 140-150 kmph, running about 25 yards to bowl one ball at a time and then keep bowling for a few overs. Your body gets stiff, injury management will be key as well because I think for any fast bowler to get back into the rhythm, it takes at least 4-6 weeks, so I think fast bowlers will have to be a little more careful than the spinners or the batsmen,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Cricket has made its return in a world of new normals with the England vs West-Indies series. It remains to be seen when Indian cricket can make a return but we sure are in for an interesting set of months to follow with sports resuming all over the world once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cricket in India has been suspended ever since the coronavirus pandemic began to exacerbate, early this year in March<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":24181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}