One of India's most destructive batsman Virender Sehwag is not a huge fan of BCCI modern-day fitness parameters and feels the emphasis should rather be on the individual's skills than the outcome of their Yo-Yo test.
Trying to prove his point, Sehwag took the example of former India greats like VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly and stated that they rarely used to achieve the fitness test yet they excelled in their department.
“I won’t agree with all of this, if these criteria existed before, Tendulkar, Laxman, and Ganguly wouldn’t have passed it. During my time, we had such a test, where they always fell short of the 12.5 mark,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
Adding more insights, Sehwag said: “Skill is important, today if you are playing a fit team but don’t have the skills, then you would ultimately end up losing. Play them based on their skills, slowly you can improve their fitness over time but if is yo-yo criteria is applied straight away, then the talks are different. If a player can field and bowl 10 overs, that should be enough, we shouldn’t be concerned about the other things.”
“I want to tell you one thing, here we are talking about yo-yo Test, Hardik Pandya doesn’t have issues with running, he has issues with workload because of his bowling. However, Ashwin and (Varun) Chakravarthy, on the other hand, haven’t cleared the yo-yo Test, that’s why they aren’t here,” the former India opener concluded.
Meanwhile, Ishant Sharma, team's premier seamer in the red-ball format, recently discussed fitness being a key element in the Indian cricket team and how the team looks upto skipper Virat Kohli in this department.
“He [Kohli] has set an example for everyone. Take the case of fat percentage – before him, I had never heard of it being spoken about in the Indian team. It was totally about skill. But now, along with skill, it is also about fitness,”Ishant told ESPNcricinfo.
“So if you eat well, you stay strong in the field, maintain your fitness, your energy. After what he did for himself, totally changed the system in the Indian team,” the seamer added.
