The Indian team has a ‘new teammate’ according to a tweet from the official handle of the BCCI. Curious right? so were we until we checked out the full video. The new teammate that is being talked about in the post is an all new acquisition of the Indian team management, which was on display during the team’s practice session in Hyderabad, ahead of the second Test against the Windies.
BCCI in its tweet wrote,”Meet Team India’s new “Teammate” Who is India’s new fielding drill assistant ? We find out more about this latest gizmo addition to #TeamIndia”
The all new fielding drill assistant is a smaller version of the bowling machine, which throws out balls at high speed from a position closer to the ground. This makes life a lot easier for the fielding coach R Sridhar, who would now not have to manually organise the fielding drills.
{{/usCountry}}The all new fielding drill assistant is a smaller version of the bowling machine, which throws out balls at high speed from a position closer to the ground. This makes life a lot easier for the fielding coach R Sridhar, who would now not have to manually organise the fielding drills.
{{/usCountry}}In the full video, posted on the BCCI website, Indian captain Virat Kohli and newcomer Prithvi Shaw can be seen practising slip catches.
Speaking about the new acquisition, Sridhar says, “I am just setting up the teammate, it’s a catching machine which helps our slip catchers to take a lot of catches, improve their reactions and reflexes. It will also help these players take a lot of catches without wasting a lot of time.”
“We can set the pace in this machine and also set the wobbling and the swing on the ball. This is something which has been useful. We will use it India as it will help us take low catches,” Sridhar added.
While speaking to the camera though Sridhar mentioned that the Indian team has been using this machine from the Test against Afghanistan and also through the England series. So, this ‘new teammate’ is not that new after all and India’s slip catching in the early part of the Test series in England was abysmal. Although it has to be acknowledged that the catching improved as the series went on.
But whether this new acquisition of Team India’s is actually a game changer or not, the jury is still out on that.