Batsmen camp concludes; new concept helpful to players:Venky

Banglaore, Jun 12 (UNI) The four-day 'Batsmen' camp' ended at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here today with specialist bowling coach B K Venkatesh Prasad saying that the new concept of fitness-specific camps had gone down well with the Indian cricketers.

Last week a bowler specific camp was conducted at the Infosys campus in Mysore, where 12 bowlers took part. The two camps were attended by probables for the coming tours of Ireland and England.

India plays an off-shore one-day series against South Africa in Ireland and a one-off match against Pakistan in Scotland in the tour beginning later this month.

The four-day camp for the Indian team bound for Ireland, which would be named today, would begin here tomorrow. The camp would be extended by a day if needed, BCCI sources said.

''With the long schedule that beckons Indian cricketers this year, such separate camps involving a bigger bunch of players was held.

This is to keep the reserve players in shape. In sport anybody can get injured and we don't want reserves saying that the are not ready due to injury when called to join the team,'' Venky, who attended both the camps, said today.

Though 15 players were named for batsmens' camp, only nine attended. The quartet of Saurav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni were busy with the Afro-Asia Cup matches, while Wasim Jaffer couldn't take part due to illness.

Those who took part were skipper Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Mohammed Kaif, Dinesh Mongia, Dinesh Kaarthik, Gautam Gambhir, S Badrinath, Robin Uthappa and Rohit Sharma.

The players went through training in Yoga, blip tests, running between the wickets, catching and on the final day today hit the ball at the net practice.

Venky said the two camps had indeed helped the players and a 'slight change' was noticeable. ''For the past nine to ten years the Indian players had become more interested in fitness and they had realised how helpful these camps can be,'' he said.

The specialist bowling coach said the training camps held during the earlier years were more monotonous and separate fitness-specific camps for bowlers and batsmen were more scientific. ''We know that this was hard on players who had a tiring tour of Bangladesh where the weather was hot. However, these camps are to help them keep going for the bigger challenges ahead,'' he added.

UNI