Cricket News: The real reason for the BCCI's introduction of the Yo-Yo Test and the Dexa scan

The Yo-Yo Test is well known as a parameter to judge fitness, although it has been done away with recently. But the Dexa scan is new and would relate more to injuries than fitness. 

The scan is intended to measure body fat percentage, lean muscle mass, water content and even bone density. 

It is also meant to track the results of training methods used for players, making it both holistic and foolproof. 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The BCCI mandates Dexa Test which will allow them to measure body fat percentage, lean muscle mass and bone density of players.</p>&mdash; Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) <a href="https://twitter.com/mufaddal_vohra/status/1609597606090637313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 1, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Is the purpose to vet newer players or better prepare senior players for the rigours of a long and often unrelenting cricket schedule? 

It should be used for both in an ideal world, given players' recent injuries. 

The likes of Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshal Patel, Washington Sundar, Deepak Chahar and others went through bouts of injuries and recovery last season. 

It was often a frustrating process, not only because the players lost time to injury and needed to start up from scratch whenever they returned. 

Furthermore, in some cases, players ended up injured and would also pick up another injury not too long after that and be out again. 

It happened with Chahar, which caused Bumrah to miss the T20 World Cup as he suffered a recurrence of the injury he had supposedly healed from ahead of the tournament. 

So ensuring that players are as fit as they should be and have access to good ways of measuring their body progress and recovery needs to be applied to both old and young players across the board. 

For elderly players, the benefit is obvious. As the body ages, it becomes much more challenging to repair quickly, so it would help them greatly if they were at optimal fitness levels. 

Not only would this prolong their careers, but it would also ensure that their risk of injury in the first place stood minimised. 

As for the younger players, it will help them be the best version of themselves from an early age and will also prolong their careers since athletes operating at their best fitness levels can play for longer. 

It is no secret that fitness as a whole is a long-term process, not something that is achieved overnight. 

The initiative must thus come from the game's stakeholders to ensure that the players fit in from the earliest stages. 

While the spate of injuries suffered by players was in many ways unfortunate, the only silver lining to the dark cloud was that it opened the eyes of the powers that be to the non-negotiable nature of fitness and elite recovery for players.