New fitness structure on its way: Physio Leipus

Leipus, who now resides in Johannesburg, has been aware of the fitness problem issues with Indian players and criticism of training programmes and has, no doubt, studied how the South Africans have gone about checking on a player’s condition during the off-season.

A training system involving fitness trainers is also being devised to get those involved up to international level at that would also help the players maintain a level of fitness.

Zaheer’s injury, Leipus said, was a cross between a slight muscle tear and muscle cramp, and due to a combination of factors. It had nothing to do with his bowling as the strain, to the left thigh, was picked up while fielding; the outfield was greasy because of a mid-game shower.

It was probably caused by a lower back movement dysfunction in the way Zaheer ran; his lower body movement in his bowling action as well as his fielding was not rare, but it did create a handicap. ‘‘He’s always been a bit gangly in the way he runs and hopefully he will get out of this as her gets older’’, Leipus said.

‘‘Zaheer felt quite gutted by this injury’’, Leipus said. ‘‘You can understand it as he has been extremely fit and then out of nowhere this happens. It casts a shadow over the programme in place of monitoring fast bowlers and it affects the mind.’’

‘‘There’s a lot more work ahead of him but for now he has done all the work to get fit for the remainder of the tournament and he remains a hundred percent positive’’, he added.

Zaheer, now six weeks short of his twenty-sixth birthday, spoke of the mental agony of this new injury and how, in the past few days, it had affected him. He began to bother him and as such created certain doubts. But had now put that behind him as he had the fittest he had felt. ‘‘I have put in a lot of hard work and then this happens. It plays on your mind, but I am okay now…quite happy to know that it was nothing serious.’’

India coach John Wright was more than happy at the way Zaheer stood up to the fitness test. ‘‘It is great to have him back in the selection equation’’, he said.