Physique != Fitness

[Lurker]

Simon Jones surely weighs more than 10 stone. I'd argue he should have weighed less. Whatever he weighs, my point is that fitness has all to do with cardiovascular fitness and little to do with being specatacularly bemuscled.

Fair enough. Now tell me how many in the current Indian cricket team do you think are cardiovascular fit Dhondy? Can you argue that Ganguly, Sehwag, Powar, Kumble etc are cardio-vascularly fit? In my opinion the ones that would fit the bracket, pun intentional, would be the likes of Zaheer Khan, Kaif, Yuvraj and to an extent Dhoni...that they are also in good shape should tell you the story.

In broad terms, you need some muscles on you because you burn more calories that way, but being bulky, say like Kallis, Symonds or Hayden, offers no advantage IMO.

All the three players you mention happens to be the best in the business. Any cricket team would want to have Hayden and Kallis in their Test side and Symonds in LOI. Surely they must be doing something right,including taking care of their fitness?

Do you not find it instructive that the most successful fast bowlers of yesteryears were lean and wiry- take Richard Hadlee, Michael Holding or Imran for example? How about McGrath or Pollock, the greats of this genre with the greatest longevity?

Hadlee was hardly a fast bowler Dhondy and Imran kept breaking down. So no I do not rate their physical prowess much. Michael Holding was tall, lanky and very fit. He was a former 400 m athlete and had wonderful legs, could keep running all day. He was not as strong as Andy Roberts was but was as fast, even faster on most days. Then again to 1 Holding you had Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Sylvester Clarker, Colin Croft, Wayne Daniel...all ferociously strong. Sure they might have been a few miles less as fast(as Holding was) but still very fast indeed. To use Holding as an example to suggest a Munaf can bowl as fast would be an aberration. Fast bowlers - from Lillee to Thomson - have all been big burly men.

1. Does it make you live longer? 2. Does it increase your endurance? 3. Does it stop you from getting injured? 4. Does it prolong your career?

Well the answer, in my opinion, is Yes to all of them. And no I am not being stubborn. See I am not suggesting a Virendra Sehwag should look like Premchandra Dogra, what I am suggesting is that Sehwag should look like an International sportsman. Physically fit, agile, alert, wiilling to convert 2 into 3, making a sliding stop and it is fair chance that a physically fit person would be able to do those better. Look at it this way. You have a Medical background. So with that in mind tell me if fitness/exercising regularly makes you live longer/ increases endurabce/prolong life/career etc or not? My bet is you would say yes. xxx

[Lurker]

Do you even remember Aravinda's fielding ? Dude, his fielding would've been top class even by the current Aussie standards. Apart from Punter,Symonds & Hussey, Aravinda is as good as ANY other Aussie fielder today. He was super-quick in his running. Dont forget either that Aravinda during SL's glory days in the mid 90s used to pinch singles like mad and he'd routinely out-run Jayasurya (who is fit as a horse FYI), Mahanama, Tillekratne, Ranatunga, etc. Only one faster than Aravinda in the entire SL team back then was Kalu. Being fat doesnt mean you cannot be really nimble on your feet, particularly if you are a short guy. This guy i recently played badminton with - a fat indonesian shorty dude- covered the court like he was a michael chang in his youth.

Bas kya? Kuch bhi? Arvinda De Silva, good fielder that he was, never held a candle to Mahanama. Tilakratne was much better as well. De Silva was a safe fielder, kind of like Virendra Sehwag and David Boon. The three of them would rarely drop a catch, and often even take blinders but were hardly the fastest movers. De Silva admittedly was much better than Sehwag and David Boon but De Silva was not fat, he was stocky. Ranatunga was fat(like Sehwag today) and we all know how he went about his cricket. xxxx

[THX_1138]

i think imran and sarfaraz said something to this measure some time back... for bowlers the best exercise is running. personally i agree with this hypothesis. i used to do about 5 hours of weight training a week for every 2 hours of cricket played and until recently when i renounced my gym membership for a simple run in the park, my bowling was just pedestrian. since i started running on a regular basis, i have better metabolism (lower BMI), better cardiovascular capability (my resting heart rate dropped from 72-74 to about 64) and above all, i no longer suffer sprains or overstretched thighs, calf, hamstrings etc... just get our bowlers into a big park and let lose some wild rabid dogs... and watch these losers bowl 90 plus later in the matches.