Ganguly counts on practice sessions to beat SA

Sourav Ganguly, the captain of the visiting Indian cricket team, is counting on practice sessions to better his team's chances of defeating hosts South Africa after two successive failures against them.

Ganguly said: "We've come here early to have a good ten-day camp before we play the one-days and obviously we will make adjustments for the game, as you do wherever you go in the world. Some of the boys have already made adjustments."

"Yes, we didn't play well the last time we were here," Ganguly conceded to IANS hours after arriving in the country on Monday.

"But it's a different side now. We've done well overseas in the last six or seven months so we hope to do well here too."

Ganguly said the absence of some key players due to injury would be felt, but they would rejoin the team as soon as possible.

"We don't have (V.V.S.) Laxman, Zaheer (Khan) and (Ashish) Nehra, who will be here for the Test matches. It's more of a precautionary measure to leave these guys back and get them fit for the Test matches. The moment we announce a Test call, in about a week or ten days before the first Test, we will have them here," said Ganguly.

The Indian team will match wits against South Africa and Kenya in a triangular limited overs series, and also play a three-Test series against South Africa.

The triangular series runs from October 5 to 27, with the Tests following from November 3 to 27. The teams will play a number of warm-up matches as well.

Thirteen of the 15-member Indian cricket team will undergo treatment to supplement weakened and abnormal joints, after being checked at a specialist centre here.

Team physiotherapist Andrew Leipus said the 13 would require orthotics.

"We're not saying that they are injured, but what the assessment picked up is that there is dysfunction there - some are minor and some are quite major and they will all be given orthotics to put into their shoes and gradually wear them in," said Leipus, adding that this would help their performance as well.

Leipus, who took the entire team to the Sports Medicine clinic here barely hours after they landed, said this was necessary to improve their performance.

"What we are trying to implement is a totally new strategy after we've had a few injuries of late," Leipus told IANS.

"A lot of those were unpreventable, but many others may be through overuse or other factors that we want to prevent to the best of our abilities, so that we do not have such a bad run again."

"What we can't get in the Indian subcontinent is a biomechanical assessment and podiatry assessment and at the clinic in Rosebank (here) these are provided."

"In a podiatry assessment, the boys are made to run on a treadmill and a computer analysis can determine whether there is any sort of biomechanical functional fault in their foot strike. If there is a dysfunction, it can lead to shin injuries, hip and back injuries."

"If any of these boys are found to have a dysfunction, then they can give us an insert which goes in the shoe to correct that dysfunction."

Leipus said a bio kinetic assessment had also been done on all the players.

"This is basically muscle function around the shoulder and the knee. Obviously, cricket is a throwing game - bowling puts a lot of stress on the shoulders. The assessment can pick up injured muscles on the front or the back and around the whole shoulder complex itself."

"Around the knee we can pick up hamstring injuries and quadriceps pulls. We want to check that the guys who have had them in the past have rehabilitated properly."

Leipus was confident the Indian team would get the best possible treatment here. He had worked at the centre for a few years before going to India to become the team's physiotherapist.

--Indo-Asian News Service

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