Bengaluru, Feb 9: Team India will assemble at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Wednesday, February 9 to begin their lead-up to the ICC Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2011.
After a thrilling series in South Africa, the team have enjoyed a well deserved break and will have a brief preparatory camp here ahead of the CWC beginning February 17, 2011 in Dhaka.
Having been in the thick of action since September 2010, the team is in good nick ahead of the all-important tournament. KSCA Hon. Secretary and former India pacer Javagal Srinath aggress with the thought. “I think it is because you play so much of cricket these days [that] a couple of matches are enough to get ready because your body would have already tuned-up by playing so much cricket,” he explained with reference to the short duration of the training camp.
Veteran leg-spinner Anil Kumble, who was part of the World Cup squad that played here in 1996, was quoted as saying, “When you are playing at home, you always have pressure to cope with. It's never easy to live up to the expectations. However this team has shown that they can overcome this pressure. Plus everyone, except a couple of guys, has played a lot of international cricket. We have an experienced team and they should do well.”
Chinnaswamy Stadium had hosted the memorable match against Pakistan in which the NCA chairman Kumble, along with Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ajay Jadeja and Venkatesh Prasad, had contributed to a famous Indian win. Sachin Tendulkar remains the only common link between that team and the present one 14 years later.
The primary aim of the three-day training camp is to help the team bond as a unit and strategise for the CWC.
S Sreesanth, who has come in as a replacement for the injured Praveen Kumar, is likely to be the first to join the camp as he is already training at the NCA while the rest of his team-mates will be arriving in batches.
The India squad will gather at the team hotel on the morning of the 9th and are expected to go through a training session at the KSCA ‘B’ ground in the afternoon guided by coach Gary Kirsten and trainer Ramji Srinivasan.
Indiawill be playing a warm-up match against Australia on February 13 in Bengaluru and against New Zealand in Chennai on February 16 before heading to Dhaka.
