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Bangalore: The Indian team, which came in late on Sunday night from Dhaka via Mumbai, chose to cancel a scheduled net session on Monday morning and spent the day cooling down at the hotel instead. Zaheer Khan and fellow left-arm pacer Ashish Nehra visited the National Cricket Academy to make use of the facilities there.
India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who was in his hometown Ranchi for a day at the National Games being hosted by Jharkhand, joined the team on Monday evening. Sachin Tendulkar, who reportedly underwent a precautionary knee scan in Mumbai, did not train on Monday.
With a gap of seven days between the opener against Bangladesh at Dhaka and their second game against England in Bangalore on Feb 27, the moot point is whether the team management would have been better off by allowing the players to break off for a couple of days and rejoin around February 24.
This was a point that even former England captain Mike Atherton, now a commentator, raised during one his stints at the mike last Saturday. "With the kind of itinerary the Indian team has, I would assume the players will be given a mini break whenever possible," Atherton had commented. "How will they keep the team going in such periods, how many net sessions can they have," Atherton had wondered.
The itinerary Atherton was referring to includes the IPL that starts barely six days after the World Cup draws to a close, a tour of the West Indies that begins almost immediately after the IPL final as also the longish tour to England, for which the Indian team may have to travel straight from the Caribbean.
This being an ICC event, naturally cricket's governing body would have had a say if the team were to break up for a few days but as per an extremely prompt reply from an ICC official, permission would have been granted had a request been made.
"It is permissible if requested, obviously subject to it being at a team's cost, security arrangements, etc," the official informed TOI. "And provided it does not result in any failure to meet any event obligations," added the official.
The Indian team is scheduled to be in Bangalore for more than two weeks, what with their third game of the World Cup, against Ireland, slated for Sunday, March 6 at the same Chinnaswamy Stadium. That means another six days between matches. Perhaps that could be the time for the mini break.
