Sunil Gavaskar has hit out at the BCCI and Indian team management for bringing back the Yo-yo test and the Dexa scan as selection criteria for the Indian team. The Yo-yo test was introduced in Virat Kohli’s reign as skipper but was later scrapped during the Rohit-Dravid era.
But during the BCCI’s review meeting last week, passing the Yo-yo test and Dexa scan were made mandatory for the Indian stars. Gavaskar said that “one size fits all” approach wouldn’t work for cricketers and stated that some of the greatest Indian players wouldn’t have passed the test.
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“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,” he writes in his Mid-Day column.
“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.” He says the managers insisted and the shins seized up. “I told them to drop me if they were going to pick the eleven based on who ran most… fitness is an individual thing and there is no such thing as one size fits all. Quick bowlers need different level than spinners, wicket-keepers need an even higher level, and batters perhaps the least. Cricket fitness should be prime consideration.”
The Yo-Yo test is a measure of a person’s endurance and involves running back and forth between two markers placed 20 meters apart at increasingly high speeds. The Dexa test, also known as the DXA test, is a procedure that uses low-dose X-rays to measure bone density. It determines how strong the bones are by measuring the amount of minerals they contain.
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