India’s practice sessions, like those of many modern-day teams, attempt to marry rigour with fun.
On Monday, the first day of India’s training, at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium in Mirpur, the drills seemed to be on familiar lines until the arrival of a ‘dummy’ batsman to the nets. Almost instantly, there was plenty of tittering in the media contingent triggered by jokes on the ‘target practice’.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar began by adjusting the height of the dummy that simulated a batsmen’s presence. Interestingly, the lightweight dummy was painted in red-and-black, the same colours that are found in India’s training jersey. Bhuvneshwar fired away a few yorkers at it. He then returned to it, adjusted its height and its position in the crease, and varied his line and length accordingly.
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The dummy, apparently, has been pressed into service for quite sometime now. It was also used by the Indian bowlers to hone their yorkers and bouncers in the recent tour to South Africa.