Team India’s strength and conditioning coach Soham Desai on Monday (May 31) said the unexpected three-week gap after the postponement of IPL 2021 gave India's top cricketers much-needed rest.
Before departing for the UK tour, Indian squad is currently under isolation in Mumbai and Desai said this period is being utilised well to address the fitness areas which otherwise go untouched.
Desai and New Zealand's Nick Webb – the two S&C coaches – have the responsibility to get the side into peak fitness before the England tour, where Virat Kohli’s men will play the marquee World Test Championship (WTC) final versus New Zealand in Southampton (June 18-22) followed by the five-Test series against the hosts (August 4-September 14).
"Nick and I both feel that we have benefitted by the gap we got for the boys to take rest. They have had a long year — right from last IPL to this," Desai told bcci.tv.
He further said they had advised the players to "rest and take some time off, stay with family and relax" before getting back to training.
The team will leave for United Kingdom on Wednesday (June 2) night and the players are gradually building towards the tour with moderate to high-intensity training.
"It has taken three weeks to take them through training which ideally they are not able to undertake due to the skills (practice), and matches being constantly there," Desai said.
"Slowly, we started building them towards what they actually need to do and where we feel they need to work out on those aspects during the season. So we filled those folders for them."
Desai also thanked the BCCI for arranging spacious hotel rooms where they could use maximum equipments for weight training during the quarantine period.
"We are thankful to BCCI that they gave us this property where there were balcony and outdoor spaces where they were able to move out and work and put good amount of weights in their rooms for them to carry out their training," he remarked.
"The idea during those times was to address the areas of their weaknesses and areas which they need to work on. From 7th, 8th and 9th day, there were doing individual training sessions," he informed.
"They (players) just trained alone on their own and it was in the gym, so they had access to treadmills and access to few areas where they could run and do their drills, did some bowling drills," Desai said.
"I think we have ticked many boxes and we are in very good space right now," he concluded.
(With PTI inputs)
