Following what has become a customary fitness evaluation exercise on the heels of the off season, Cricket West Indies’ (CWI) Head of Sports Science and Sports Medicine, Dr Oba Gulston says he has seen an improvement in the fitness of the Guyanese players.
The assessment which was conducted at the National Track and Field Facility, Leonora, West Coast Demerara early yesterday morning was marred by showers, however the players managed to show their worth through the various drills.
“Basically we had our pre-season fitness test and we are going around to all the franchises where we do the fitness testing, we do it a couple times for the year and it is really meant to assess where the players are and at the same time it gives data for the coaches to see where the players need to improve on and the areas we are doing well so far,” Gultson stated.
Dr Oba Gultson,
He pointed out “The purpose of the fitness test is not to pass or fail and unfortunately a lot of people think so, the fitness assessment is really to see where players are, what areas they had improved in and what needs to be done specifically so it is not like CXC like passing or failing because you can’t judge a Usain Bolt in a marathon and a marathon runner in a sprint.”
Judging on the performances over the various territories, Gultson said, “throughout the region we continue to see improvements, Guyana is no exception in the fitness testing. Generally we didn’t have much an issue with speed and power in most of the franchises but the area we had the issues with over the last few years is cardiovascular fitness and we probably had about half of the players in Guyana going over level 40 which is the first time we have seen this in Guyana and we continue to have a couple guys like Trevon Griffith and Tevin Imlach who continue to excel, always over 50 and they continue to do that and a number of other players running over 40 in the yo-yo is a really good sign and means we are moving in the right direction.”
The CWI head stated that the benchmark set by CWI “asked all players to run over 40 and all international and centrally contracted players up to 50 so basically that is where we are heading.”
With another test coming ahead of the Regional Super50, Gultson was happy to see players up to the challenge of reaching this benchmark.
He admitted that while “it may not help your skill per se, it gives you the ability to get more quality training hours and helps your recovery and decreases the risk of getting injured based on work load.”
Meanwhile, Territorial Development Officer, Colin Stuart opined that the players could have done a bit better but admitted that the weather was a factor as well as them coming in from the off-season.
