Glenn Mitchell on the CA bowler rotation policy

Great piece by Glenn Mitchell on the Roar. Echoes my views on the increasingly influential role of so-called "sports scientists" in modern professional sport in general, including rugby.

http://t.co/zpxwoeXF

you cant compare sport from 50 years ago to the game of today.
everything is different. the players are trained totally differently. and are IMO in a higher state of fitness than players years ago. because they are engineered that way.

conditioning an athlete is now like seeing how far you can pull an elastic band. get as much out of it without it snapping.

i think that all athletes are nowdays consistently closer to injury than ever before. because they train in so many different ways to eliminate all weaknesses out of their game.

Fair comment Jono. But some of the comparisons Glenn makes are from the modern era (D Gough, A Flintoff, A Caddick as examples)

I guess the thing that bothers me is that all the "science" and clinical stuff is becoming too dominant these days and I'm not sure that is a good thing. Balance is what is needed. I feel that sports scientists are becoming some sort of Pied Piper and are having too much influence.

The rotation policy is rubbish

Australia is the only nation that has one and Australia is the only nation with injuries plaguing the fast bowling stocks.

Bowlers in the test squad only bowl 30 to 40 balls in the nets which isn't preparing young bowlers for the rigors of test cricket where in a full day in the field a bowler can be expected to bowl 3 or 4 spells of 7-10 overs.

The bowlers should be training more and playing more shield cricket instead of gimmicky T20 rubbish where they only bowl 4 overs. I thinks its criminal that through most of the Australian Test season the domestic sides are playing the Big Bash which is no way to judge performance for the longer format

Dennis Lille hammered the policy on ABC grandstand during the Perth test

If you want to rest the Test bowlers give them a rest through the ODIs and T20s

It's all based on good intentions; the idea that:

a) pace bowling puts such a strain on the body that it needs rest.
b) playing the same 4-5 bowlers test after test means you have no cover for injuries when they do occur.

However, my answers to those ideas are:

a) Why is that strain on the body greater than pace bowlers used to have? When a bowler bowled 60,000+ balls he honed his action himself to produce something he felt comfortable with, which wouldn't put too much stress on his body. The sports scientists and endless tape reviewing with modern bowlers to produce bowling actions as near to 'perfection' as possible cause injuries by preventing the bowler from bowling a natural action.

b) Bowling is about repitition, the muscle memory that allows you to bowl ball after ball in the same spot, varying the delivery slightly to produce variations in what the batsman has to face. The best test bowlers pin a batsman down, preventing runs, making them play at balls which they think are a little looser, but which have been bowled for a reason. The best bowlers also study the batsman, learning how he reacts to different balls faced. All this requires the bowler to bowl as many balls as possible. Consistent bowling line-ups are good, because just as batsmen work well in known combinations, bowlers work well in known tandems. The rotation, and bringing in of fresh faces*, will occur naturally as bowlers suffer injuries, loss of form, birth of progeny, etc. You don't need to force rotation.

* From, eg, the ODI squad.