A day after BCCI president said selectors would have the final say on Sourav Ganguly, Team India biomechanist Ian Frazer joined the debate on retirement, saying cricket authorities here would have to come to terms fast with making ‘‘hard decisions’’ when it came to a player’s retirement.‘‘It’s a matter of using resources’’, Frazer said. ‘‘The establishment will have to make hard decisions because the game has gone up to another level. There is more money in it, so the players won’t be moving on to other activity. It is new to cricket. Handling post-retirements will be an issue, players need to be shown there are certain areas of life.’’Some of his references would seem to fit Ganguly’s case perfectly. ‘‘Players are self-protective, that is natural. But all the players (who were given the nudge) Taylor, Waugh, Healy, even Border, have said that is the best thing to have happened to them.’’He said Indians, despite their diverse cultural background, had the ability to make such hard decisions. ‘‘Indians have entered in the business world, they are in the global market where they make decisions everyday. It is a natural consequence. It can be done, and done professionally.’’The performance of the new support staff, including Chappell and Frazer, has been questioned by some of the players who say the increase in workload has caused “fear and insecurity” in them.‘‘If they have an increase in work load, I have not heard them say. It might be more than it was in the past, but their fitness levels have gone up too’’, Frazer said.‘‘Greg and I set out to make them physically and mentally ready, to have a good foundation for the coming time. I think the players are extremely excited about the feedback’’, he said.‘‘You can’t have it both ways. When we took over, it was said they are low on fitness levels. Now when the work load is more, they say they haven’t improved. I think the fitness levels have gone up from what it was before,” he said. (With PTI)
