Cricket News: Roger Binny -"We will get to the bottom of frequent player injuries" Who is to blame?

While addressing the media as BCCI President after taking the post in the board’s Annual General Meeting, Roger Binny said, “I want to primarily focus on two things. First is the prevention of injuries to the players. Jasprit Bumrah got injured just before the World Cup, which affects the whole plan.”

“Second, I want to focus on the pitches in the country. There needs to be more life on the wickets at home, so that our teams don’t have a problem adjusting when travelling abroad, like in Australia where there’s more pace and bounce.”

Elaborating on the injuries which have become common among every second player, he said, “Players getting frequently injured is a concern and we wish to get to the bottom of it all and see how it can be changed for the better.” 

“We have to sit down and discuss what’s going wrong. We have excellent doctors and trainers at the National Cricket Academy [in Bangalore], but must look to reduce injuries and improve recovery [methods].”

To what extent are IPL teams responsible for the injuries and how can Team India find a solution?

Whenever a player gets injured before a mega-tournament or is rested in any bilateral series, many questions are raised over their dedicated performance in IPL for two straight months without needing a break for workload management. 

It becomes disheartening when key players get injured playing in domestic leagues and then become unavailable for crucial tournaments at the international level. 

Former team, India coach Ravi Shastri also expressed his frustration over this. He said, “It was the most frustrating thing for me as (India coach) when you lose key players to injuries. We toured England and New Zealand twice. On all those tours, Bhuvneshwar Kumar was injured, where he’d have got a bagful of wickets with his skills.”

“Now, you see Chahar has hardly played, and he’s injured. I was looking at the stats, Bumrah has played five matches since the last T20 World Cup and he’s injured. So, you’ve got to look at it very seriously, as to why it is happening.”

Speaking on whether players should be rested in the IPL as one of its solutions, he added, “Tomorrow, if a cricketer, for the sake of playing for India, needs to be rested in the IPL for a certain number of games, so be it. Where, a (BCCI) president has to sit with the franchise and explain that he’s extremely important for India first, and then the franchise.”

While it might not be fair to hail IPL for being solely responsible for injuries, many players nowadays pick up injuries off-field doing other activities or in net sessions. Deepak Chahar picked an injury right after the IPL auctions while practising in nets. Ravindra Jadeja, who got ruled out of the Asia Cup and subsequently the World Cup, also caught an injury while skiing, which aggravated his knee problems.

The major problem lies in when a player gets injured, they recover and return after rehabilitation, and still, their injury causes them trouble even after playing just one match. This happened with Jasprit Bumrah, who returned from NCA post-recovery, and after playing a game or two, his previous back injury worsened, forcing him to be ruled out. 

Even Bhuvneshwar Kumar, in his injury days, seemed to be making on-and-off appearances in matches which delayed his comeback to international cricket. 

BCCI president Roger Binny, when asked if India needs to have three teams for three different formats for workload management, he said: “We will discuss that to avoid injuries.”