The National Cricket Academy has been rechristened (NCA) to Centre of Excellence (COE) as it found a new home in Bengaluru but it appears to be a case of “old wine in a new bottle”, with still no clarity on injury management timelines for specific players.
Whether it is India’s Number 1 pacer Jasprit Bumrah or country’s fastest bowler Mayank Yadav, the COE has maintained an iron curtain regarding the timeline and process of injury management.
There used to be a running joke about the COE for injured players few years back: “You can check-in anytime of the year but you can’t leave”.
From injury management (by the physios) in COE’s Sports Science and Medical team to rehabilitation and injury prevention (by Strength and Conditioning coach) to return to play (handled by bowling coaches cum biomechanics experts), a player goes through a complicated three-way process.
For any and every injury and subsequent ‘Return To Play’, there are timelines, which obviously vary from player to player. But not being able to even provide a rough estimation of a player’s return hasn’t actually amused anyone related to Indian cricket.
“Over the past year, in most injury and rehabilitation cases, the medical team has simply stated ‘clinically fit,’ which offers no real clarity on a player’s Return to Play. Don’t want to name but many players resume skill training under bowling coach only to still experience discomfort.”
“The medical team is always non-committal on Return to Play,” a BCCI source privy to developments in COE told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
“It is a strange situation where there remains a question mark with regards to proper co-ordination between the various verticals which needs work in tandem to get a an elite athlete back on track.”
In case of Mayank, he had a six-month lay-off between April and October when he first suffered a side strain. He made his international debut against Bangladesh in October. He last played on October 12 and has been out with lower back stress fracture for last five months.
While he is expected to miss the first few games for LSG, Shardul Thakur training with the team suggests that Mayank’s injury might be more serious than what people are envisaging.
For Bumrah, the last official statement that came was from chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar, who had informed that pace ace required five weeks of off-loading (complete rest from any rigorous exercise) before he can start training. That was back in early February and with IPL starting in next few days, Bumrah still isn’t fit. “There is a reason why England and Wales Cricket Board has renowned sports and exercise medicine expert Dr Nick Pierce as their Chief Medical Officer (CMO). There is too much at stake for a physio to stick his neck out and give a proper overview of a player’s medical condition. Hopefully, BCCI would have a sports medicine expert as head and not just a physio,” a former national selector, who has seen how NCA functions said.
There is also a perennial problem when it comes to co-ordination between the national team’s travelling support staff and the team working at BCCI’s COE
base in Bengaluru.
If multiple sources are to be believed, the “co-ordination is nothing to write home about.”
The IPL franchises spend millions on their key fast bowlers and they have every right to have a proper feedback from the COE not just the player updating them, a senior franchise official said.
Another interesting aspect that came out while talking to a number of people who have witnessed or worked in the COE is lack of “historical database” which also goes a long way in quick diagnosis and prognosis in terms of injuries.
“The BCCI now has an Athlete Management System (AMS) where the state team S&C trainers and physios update the injury management database. But what we need is a system of collecting body structure related data of all registered U-16 players.
“Someone from Tamil Nadu would have a very different body type to one in Punjab, Delhi or Haryana and boy from Bengal would be very different from ones in North East,” a S&C coach, who has worked with COE said.
“One needs to collect data of their bone density, the kind of injuries each might have sustained early on and also kind of injuries each different body can be subjected to. It would take five to seven years of that historical data and then you can be sure about timelines when you are treating a player within the system,” he added.
