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Journalism of Courage
The unassuming Adrian le Roux, seen as a vital ingredient in India’s cricketing resurgence, may have spend just one year with the team but in the short span he developed a special bond with the players, a fact reflected in the bundle of fond memories that the team now cherishes. A disciplinarian to the core, le Roux managed to develop a close rapport with the players and the cricketers have no hesitation in acknowledging his role in raising their fitness level. ‘‘He worked magic for the team. He played such an important role and improved the fitness level beyond recognition,’’ said ace off-spinner Harbhajan Singh.
Other members of the team, including captain Saurav Ganguly, at one point or the other, had similar words of praise for le Roux who decided to take up the job of fitness trainer for the South African national team last week.
Le Roux, who joined the team in April 2002, introduced innovative methods to train the players and a hitherto uncommon scene of players warming-up with a game of volleyball before practice had become quite a routine during his tenure.
Le Roux’s strict fitness regime began to bear fruits as the fitness level of the players improved considerably and it began to reflect in their performance.
The hard-task-master that he was, the South African did not spare anybody, a fact revealed by captain Ganguly himself.
‘‘I remember a side game in West Indies last year. We were playing a first class game at St Lucia and Sachin (Tendulkar) and I opted out of that game. Le Roux then made us run almost the entire island. We could only curse ourselves as playing the match would have been a far easier option,’’ Ganguly had said before le Roux’s decision to shift to South Africa. ‘‘You only have to look at how lean most of us – Sachin, Anil (Kumble), Zaheer (Khan), Veeru (Virender Sehwag) — became during Adrian’s tenure. Also how significantly our muscle content improved,’’ he said.
Le Roux kept a strict personal watch on cricketers, monitoring their diet and fitness chart but there were occasions when he asked cricketers to take it easy as was the case in England last summer when he forced Dinesh Mongia and Mohammad Kaif to take a free day as they were pushing themselves too hard.
Left-arm paceman Ashish Nehra is proud of the fact that he went through the entire last season without missing a single Test or one-day international match. ‘‘I hardly missed a game for one full year, starting with the tour to West Indies in April last year and it was largely due to the efforts of le Roux,’’ said Nehra. Zaheer was similarly effusive in his praise of le Roux when India defeated England by an innings at Leeds and the left-armer bowled for three days at a stretch without a drop in pace.
‘‘Zaheer was bowling faster on the last day than he had done on two previous days – regularly touching 90 kmph,’’ said Ganguly.
So remarkable was the influence exerted by le Roux that towards the last few months of his association with the Indian team, stocky cricketers like Sehwag came to be regarded as one of the fittest in the team.
