Management of Indian cricket team to raise fitness' bar soon: Reports

The management of Indian cricket team is all set to raise the bar of fitness soon as the desired level of clearing the yo-yo test which is 16.1, is all set to be raised to 16.5 or 17, a report in TOI suggests.

“Fitness has always been one of the key aspects associated with this team. There are discussions going on as to whether the benchmark could go a touch higher, say 16.5, to increase the fitness standards further. There has to be progression in every aspect and fitness is no different. However, nothing has been finalised,” a source told TOI.

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During team India’s pre-departure press conference, skipper Virat Kohli himself revealed that it was the decision of him and Ravi Shastri to make fitness paramount for the players and now, they are all set to raise the bar as well, making it more difficult, thus pushing players to pay extra focus on fitness.

The reports had earlier suggested that Manish Pandey turned out to be the fittest player in the team as he touched the mark of 19.2 followed by that of the skipper – who scored 19 in the test. This means that few players have scored more than enough of what the team management will ask in the future.

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The yo-yo test has become the non-negotiable factor to get a place in the team. It saw Yuvraj Singh being dropped from the side and then Suresh Raina failing to get back in the side as well. They cleared the test recently. However, they could not make a comeback to the national side because Yuvraj had not played any competitive game in last two months while Raina had a had a poor form in Ranji Trophy.

Though now when the team management is set to raise the bar, it will be interesting to see whether they would be asked to undergo the test again as the bar will be reset soon, which will apply to all the players. Both of them are not a part of the ODI squad for the series against South Africa but can make a comeback for the T20I series if they do well in the upcoming domestic T20 competition – Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

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