After conducting a review meeting for Team India’s performance in 2022 on 1st January, the BCCI decided to reintroduce the Yo-Yo fitness test as eligibility criteria for selecting the Indian squad.
This test was a norm to be picked in the Indian team before the COVID-19 pandemic when Virat Kohli was the captain, with the keenness of having fitter players out there in the park.
Amid the recent development, batting legend Sunil Gavaskar has expressed his disappointment at BCCI’s decision to bring back the Yo-Yo test, saying that the selection committee should now have medical experts instead of former India cricketers.
“Many years back, when this physical fitness fad had started, we had two former team-mates who had retired and now were the managers of the team for different series that season,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.
“Ever since I have been a schoolboy cricketer, I have suffered from a condition called shin splits where doing even a couple of laps of ground would make the muscles around shin seize up and make it painful to walk. I told them to drop me if they were going to pick the eleven based on who ran most,” he added.
According to Gavaskar, the Yo-Yo test will fail as a parameter since spinners, pacers and wicketkeepers require different fitness levels.
"The point am trying to make is fitness is an individual thing and there is no such thing as one size fits all. The quick bowlers need a different level than the spinners, the wicket keepers need an even higher level and the batters perhaps the least. So it’s rough when the parameters are set for everybody and not according to one’s specialty," he wrote.
"Cricket fitness should be the prime consideration. And yes, it would be revealing if these fitness tests are done in the public domain with the media present for then we would know if a player is ‘yo yo’ or no no," he further said.
Besides the Yo-Yo test, the BCCI will use DEXA (Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) as a parameter for picking the Indian squad. DEXA takes into account various aspects like bone density and body fat percentage.
"The CAC has just interviewed candidates for the selection committee panel, but not one was a bio-mechanics expert or a body science person. Since eligibility is going to be based on the fitness of a player, it might be better to have these experts in the selection panel than former cricketers," wrote Gavaskar.
"After all if it comes to a choice between two players for a spot in the team these experts would be in a better position to tell which among the two is fitter than the other and never mind the runs scored or wickets taken by the two players."
(Mid-Day Inputs)
