Fast bowling is an art. A more intricate art is rearing and maintaining a fast bowler. As a piece hung at the Louvre, pacers require tedious time to conserve them. A moment’s fallacy and your eyes will witness a masterpiece rotting. Pakistan’s fast bowling is as good a case study as can be found to understand what happens when fast bowlers are not manufactured with a handle-with-care label on them.
Lately, the men in green have been battling the injury epidemic that has hit their fast-bowling camp. The growing list of injured pacers each day signals an underlying systematic error that is affecting the entire production line. Something is amiss, and unless that issue is troubleshooted, we will continue to see more news releases from the PCB titled ‘update on XYZ bowler.’
How faulty is Pakistan’s fast bowling production line?
There is no you-cant-sit-with-us relation between fast bowlers and injuries. This species is prone to injuries from head to toe. The problem is bred when this starts occurring frequently. Precisely what is happening with Pakistan’s fast bowling. In the last 12 months alone, the men with star emblems on their jerseys have managed to see at least eight of their quicks jog to the sidelines after incurring injuries.
It stung the team in bilaterals equally well as it did during the mega-events. Shaheen Afridi’s knee in braces after the last T20 World Cup has since been a PTSD trigger for the fans of the game in the country. Naseem Shah’s absence from what turned into an ominous ODI World Cup campaign for Pakistan bowling this year surely aroused the same feelings in the hearts too. Khurram Shehzad, who had just begun addressing Pakistan’s issues with red-ball fast bowling, becomes the latest victim of this adversity.
Get more biomechanists on board
The PCB needs to hire biomechanists and additional medical support staff if they have not already done so. Bowlers in general, and fast bowlers specifically, require a bowling action that minimizes the risk of injuries. Shehzad’s action raised concerns among some game analysts during his debut Test match. The decline in his pace during the later stages of the Perth Test forewarned of this issue without the need to consult a seer.
Khurram’s case is, unfortunately, not an exception. Many Pakistan fast bowlers were forced to warm the benches by their faulty way of rolling arms. The realization that the country’s fast bowlers need to make it to the national team and get injured to determine the sustainability of their bowling action is excruciating but also quite amusing. However, minds more sane than mine question the lack of assessment at the initial levels. Morphing actions in the later stages of a career and after injuries have taken their toll can prolong the recovery time, thus increasing the burden of injuries manifold. Moreover, the consequences of player injuries are not limited to failing to earn glory but extend mercilessly to the continuous and longer-lasting effects they have on the said player’s performance.
For instance, Shaheen Shah Afridi, despite recovering from his knee injury, remains the talk of the town due to the observed drop in his pace. Some attribute this decline to a psychological effect of his injury, while others believe it is because he is still in the process of recovery.
Adhering to fitness standards
The next consideration is the players’ and management’s perception and adherence to established fitness standards. No one is exempt, nor should they be. This encompasses ensuring that no fast bowler joins the national team without a thorough assessment of their endurance to meet the demands of international play. Crucially, there are other criteria besides excelling in a season of first-class cricket for barging into the senior team, especially in test matches.
Several young players, including Mohammad Hasnain, Ihsanullah, and Abrar Ahmed (though a spinner, the same applies to him), and Naseem Shah, among others, were forced out of the team due to injuries. This suggests that fitness standards might have played a role in their exclusion.
What are the two magical words?
Workload management is the elixir of life for players. Especially in the present era with more cricket matches than one can keep count of, bowlers ought to be protected from a cricket overdose. Naseem Shah is believed to have succumbed to the unbelievable amount of workload he had to endure across formats in the absence of Shaheen.
Shaheen, too, could not escape the downside of being a protagonist. Despite the playing time he lost to injuries, the left-arm pacer remains top of the list among pacers to share the bowling burden of their respective teams.
Apropos to managing workload, an ideal situation would be to formulate split teams for each format. This, as of now, remains a distant dream for the Pakistan team. It should not, however, stop the management from reducing the number of games played by each player, in our case fast bowler.
