While the BCCI’s attention is focused on finding a successor to John Wright, it has kept a lid on good work going on within the establishment. With the players on vacation, or a busman’s holiday in the English leagues, fitness trainer Gregory King has been travelling the country spreading his message down the line.His main work has been with the national players but, happily, that’s not all. ‘‘I’ve also been working with the physios and the physical trainers at the zonal cricket academies and the National Cricket Academy (in Bangalore),’’ King told The Indian Express. ‘‘And I’m interacting with the state players too.’’‘‘I’m not supervising them but just trying to help them and interact with them since I am inaccessible when the national team is playing,’’ he adds.King will also submit an assessment report of the ZCAs and the NCA soon. ‘‘This was the first time that I have visited the various academies and now I have an idea of how they run. And, compared to a few years ago, I think the academies are looking better and healthier. There is still a need to improve things but from where they were it definitely seems better,’’ he says.Having travelled to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, King is back in Mumbai and due to leave for a vacation as soon as Gloster returns.A request to the board to have a short camp for fast bowlers — national and Ranji-level players — and work out a detailed fitness program for them is in the pipeline. This would help pull promising fast bowlers fast tracked straight into the national team in case of injuries to senior fast bowlers.Typically, the BCCI has not communicated any of this — much needed — work to the media. It would be the kind of effort any sports body would announce, more so the BCCI given its woeful record in improving the domestic game.When this paper called BCCI secretary S K Nair and asked him about the whereabouts of King and physio John Gloster, he replied: ‘‘They are attending to some projects in the National Cricket Academy (NCA).’’ Joint secretary Gautam Dasgupta seemed as clueless: “Gregory King is in South Africa, on leave, and I am not sure where Gloster is.”When Nair was called for a reconfirmation, he said, ‘‘I don’t know where they are. In the off-season, we send them to NCA, whatever they ask them to do, they do.’’
