Jonty Rhodes Stresses on Need for Recovery for Indian Cricketers from Fatigue

The ace South African fielder points to certain problems within Indian cricket that have been known for a while now but need stressing nonetheless.

Jonty Rhodes

Jonty Rhodes was in the city to promote a range of nutritional supplements. However, given his involvement with Indian cricket as a fielding consultant holding fielding sessions across the country, it was only natural that Rhodes' opinion on the state of Indian cricket would naturally be a topic of discussion. And what Jonty had to say was not new but nonetheless important to emphasize once more for the understanding of the men that matter.

Rhodes was talking about the slump that Indian cricket found itself on the tour of England and he made no bones about the fact that the Indian cricketers were perhaps feeling the effects of surplus effect of too much cricket that was not allowing them to recover from fatigue and injuries with the hectic demands of the international cricket schedule.

Although Rhodes himself did not mention the IPL specifically, he himself is involved with the Mumbai Indians in the IPL, it was clearly an indicator that the combination of the IPL with the demanding international cricket schedule was not really allow the Indian body to recover to be able to perform at one's best. He did however mention that playing the IPL and then not playing for the country in lieu of rest was perhaps not an option for Indian cricketers who feared losing their place in the team.

Jonty's words were also one of the relevant reasons echoed to explain why the Indian cricketers continued to play with niggles and injuries that eventually took their toll and resulted in Indian cricketers missing large portions of the international assignments as is evident. Furthermore, the results have also suffered as an obvious outcome, affecting India's standing in world cricket. In the absence of regulation and spacing of the international cricket calendar, and with the board dismissive of the fatigue factor under the premise that most international cricketers were sharing the same amount of workload, little seems likely to change on that front.