Sport

'Let's get physical'

Ramnaresh Sarwan of the West Indies retires hurt after being hit by the ball on the elbow during game seven of the VB Series One Day International Tournament between Pakistan and the West Indies played at the Adelaide Oval ,Adelaide, Australia earlier this year. - Photo by Hamish Blair/Getty Images

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NEWLY-APPOINTED strength and conditioning co-ordinator for the West Indies cricket team, Australian Bryce Cavanagh, has joined head coach Bennett King in expressing his disappointment in the general fitness of the regional team.

Cavanagh, who was appointed by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) last week, conducted a rigorous fitness session yesterday at the 3W's Oval at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, after the Windies lost the third Digicel Test at Kensington Oval by an innings and 86 runs.

The strongly built Australian believes that the West Indies players are not performing consistently throughout the five days of a Test match because they lack all-round fitness capabilities.

Fatigue

"One of the problems with these blokes is that they fatigue in the last three days of a Test, especially the fifth day," Cavanagh explained.

"One of the things that I want to do is to be able to improve their aerobic capacity, get them fitter, so that in the last couple days they can be competitive."

Cavanagh also wants to work with other regional cricketers in order to improve their fitness and strength, prior to entering the West Indies Test set up. This is geared towards building a more efficient fitness base for these players.

Aerobic base

"I'll start working not just with these blokes but regional, so when they go back to their various regions, that they can implement that (fitness regimen) throughout the whole Caribbean," Cavanagh said.

"So that when other guys progress to the West Indies with a sound core and aerobic base we don't have to do all the work here, it is already done."

Star batsman Brian Lara missed the training session with a sore knee but Cavanagh enforced that he would be putting in extra work with the double world record holder and any other player with an injury off the field .

"Those guys don't get missed," he stressed. "Brian Lara has issues with his knees and we are trying to nurse him through to play. If he does a session like that (Monday's session) it will affect him a fair bit."

He added: "From time to time there will be particular players that will have niggling injuries and we will pull him out of that sort of stuff but behind closed doors in the gym, I will be doing alternative fitness (boxing, rowing machine)."

"I try to make all that stuff a lot harder than what the guys do running. The whole idea behind that is no one wants to be injured, no one will try to cut corners to get out of the running because they will only get something harder."