Former New Zealand Test captain and coach Glenn Turner believes the answer to many problems being experienced by bowlers may lie in under-use rather than over-use.

With New Zealand having suffered a remarkable string of bowlers suffering from stress-related back injuries in recent years, Turner has done some research looking at bowler workloads, as far back as the 1920s.

"I went back that far to see what some of the workloads were, especially in county cricket in England.

"Some of the old boys back then were bowling 2000 overs a year.

"Blokes like Fred Trueman and Brian Statham were bowling 1200 overs a year in their prime.

"In his busiest year Richard Hadlee bowled something like 1200 overs in the year," he said.

Turner compared that to a bowler like New Zealand left-arm medium-fast bowler Shayne O'Connor who last year, in one of his busiest seasons before injury, bowled only 450 overs.

"What's happened?" Turner asked.

He believed that bowlers nowadays have not trained to cope with the workload required of them. Some bowlers also came back too quickly from injuries and other bowlers were just not capable of achieving the workload asked of them in bowling 25 overs in a day.

Turner recounted his days at Worcestershire during the 1960s and 1970s when regular bowlers like Len Coldwell and Jack Flavell bowled 25 overs day in and day out, warmed up by bowling six bouncers in the morning and had six or seven pints of an evening after a day's play.

Turner wasn't against players building their strength and conditioning in gymnasiums, there was a place for that but he felt that many could take on more bowling as part of their preparation.

"The balance does have to be right," he said.

Turner also expressed reservations about the intrusion of biomechanics into bowling actions. He appreciated there were instances where change was good.

But he also wondered whether much was known about the danger of changing people's actions and the effects of different muscles being used.

Having seen a bowler like South African Mike Procter in action so many times Turner could only wonder what might have happened to him had someone tried to make his wrong-footed action biomechanically correct.

"If someone is breaking down often maybe you do have to make changes," he said.

"The other thing about those bowlers of earlier times was the rest they had. Invariably when they weren't bowling they put their feet up and when they had a game off for bad weather they had total rest, and that is an important facet," Turner said.

Turner has taken up the coaching position of the Otago team this summer after last year's coach Denis Aberhart was appointed to the New Zealand coaching position.

© CricInfo