Dennis Lillee has been camping in Chennai for the past few days along with an entourage of experts from various specialist fields impinging on the art of fast bowling. Besides interacting with the boys training at the MRF Pace Foundation, these boffins also took the opportunity to advise coaches from all over the country at a two day seminar organised by the Foundation that began in the city on Friday. The lectures covered a range of issues from fitness planning and sports psychology to biomechanics and sports medicine. The audience, which included several former Test cricketers, listened in rapt attention to what must be one of the first initiatives in bringing the coaching fraternity in India abreast with a scientific and holistic approach towards developing allround cricketing personalities.

Lillee set the ball rolling with a lucid exposition on fast bowling liberally sprinkled with wisecracks. When someone asked how a good length spot is to be targeted, Lillee started off saying that Richie Benaud marked it with a handkerchief in practice. 'You probably used a turban" he remarked looking in the direction of Bishen Bedi. When someone else inquired what one tells a bowler who has problems with his runup and rhythm, "Ask him to play tennis", Lillee shot back without pausing for breath. Here is a brief precis of what he said:

On the lack of fast bowlers in India

You can't create fast bowlers. You have to wait for the talent to come through and have the infrastructure in place to be prepared for that moment. In Australia too we had a dearth for some time and all of a sudden 3-4 guys came through.

On what he looks for in a young quick

Athleticism, Rhythm in runup and action, coordination, determination ("I look in his eye"), willingness and finally pure explosiveness at the bowling crease.

On pitches in India

If you're quick in the air, it doesn't matter what the pitch is like. The yorker is just as quick. The bouncer may be slower but a good length ball is a good length ball on any wicket and difficult to get away. Some great fast bowlers have come to India and been super successful.

On swing bowling

Guys don't swing the ball as they used to in my days. Technically they're not using their wrist movement and the followthrough to good effect. The more angle you have on the seam, it swings early and the straighter you have the seam, the later the swing.

On seam bowling

You keep the wrist straight behind the ball, seam upright, and just try to hit the seam. It's different from cutters where you cut your fingers across the seam. You can't hit the seam and make it go the way you want. Brian Statham said that he just went up and hit the seam and if he didn't know which way its going, nor is the batsman.

On practice

Practice makes perfect is a lot of bullshit. Perfect practice makes perfect. Without purpose in practice, all you do is work up a good sweat with nil productivity.

Fitness trainer Richard Done took the baton from Lillee and talked about how fitness can be used to improve player skills. Done stressed the importance of off season training, highlighting how fitness levels generally trailed off towards the end of a season which meant that a player has to pick up the pieces all over again next time. He also stated that there was a different rate of loss of endurance skills as compared to strength skills when training was ceased. If endurance training was stopped for three weeks, then you were virtually back to square one whereas one strength training session a week was enough to maintain 90-95% of strength levels.

Sports psychologist, Dr.Sandy Gordon declared that cricket was a highly mental game because there were pockets of time between deliveries and between overs during which the gray cells could be exercised. He said mental skills must be integrated into coaching and during a training drill the emphasis can be subtly changed from technical skills to mental skills with the players themselves not being aware of it. Gordon also noted that one should set performance oriented goals rather than outcome oriented ones like 100 runs or five wickets for a game because these were not within the control of a player. There may be days when a bowler bowls brilliantly and goes wicketless and vice versa. The Australian psyche was extremely appropriate for competitive sport, he observed, and although he would not profess to know what India's culture was like, their body language during World Cup 99 indicated that the Indians were not mentally as tough.

Mark Portus, a specialist in biomechanics from the AIS in Canberra, talked about the multifactoral causes of back injury. Even a guy with a perfect action was not immune to injury because fast bowling was an unnatural activity, he pointed out. Poor technique, Portas said, was the primary cause and illustrated the three kinds of bowling actions: front on, side on and mixed, of which the side on and front on techniques were 'technically sound if properly executed'. However the 'mixed action', which involved a lack of alignment between hips and shoulders, was statistically linked to a high incidence of lower back stress fractures.

Finally the two medical practitioners took the floor and elucidated on a gamut of issues relating to injury prevention and sports medicine. Dr. Anant Joshi debunked the myth of 'no pain, no gain' although Bishen Bedi seemed to demur, stating that 'sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind'. Joshi went on to relate that injuries are relatively less among Indian players because most of them play well within the comfort zone. Max Pfitzner suggested that for optimum recovery after an exhausting day's play, players should do some stretching exercises at the end of the day rather than on the next morning. He also said that in hot and humid conditions, fast bowlers could lose upto four kilograms of fluid in one session and advocated the constant replenishment of fluid even between drinks breaks.

The seminar which was attended among others by TA Sekhar, WV Raman, Hanumant Singh, Vasu Paranjpe, Bishen Bedi, Ashok Mankad, Madan Lal, Lalchand Rajput, Chandrakant Pandit and Rumesh Ratnayake will have its concluding day on Saturday.

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