The Tamil Nadu Ranji Trophy probables, who underwent high-performance fitness training sessions for 10 days in Wayanad in Kerala and for seven days at the Brabourne Stadium here will have a winding up session on Tuesday morning and return home the same evening.
In all 28 probables and five members of the support staff benefitted from the TNCA initiative that gave them a first-time opportunity to train and practise beyond the familiar home conditions.
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It gave the probables a feeling of togetherness and also helped them work on various aspects of the game that will hold them in good stead for 10 weeks of the Ranji Trophy league.
Dinesh Karthik, Abhinav Mukund and Baba Aparajith left for Rohtak for the Duleep Trophy semifinal South Zone will play against East Zone.
Tamil Nadu will start this season’s Ranji Trophy campaign against defending champion Karnataka on December 7 and conclude the league with a match against Baroda from Februrary 9, 2015.
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“The players have been busy since July taking part in the TNCA leagues and other tournaments. Fitness will be a critical factor right. We focused on conditioning stuff.
Moreover there is a sameness to pitches at home and so the idea was to get used to different pitches (Wayanad and CCI) and also weather conditions,” said team coach W.V. Raman.
Raman, the former India Test and ODI player and batting coach of Kolkata Knight Riders told The Hindu that the high-performance fitness sessions were done to get rid of the staleness and fatigue the players may have begun to feel after playing non-stop cricket since July.
Fitness skills“We played matches among ourselves and generally much of the time was spent on physical training and fitness skills sessions in Wayanad. We increased that to cricketing sessions at the CCI and also played a couple of matches among ourselves,” said Raman.
Apart from Raman, other key members of the support staff were assistant coach M. Sanjay and Sunil Subramaniam, attached to the TNCA academy.