VVS Laxman, the current head of BCCI Center Of Excellence, said he wants players to prepare for various challenges in their careers by adapting to different conditions at the newly-inaugurated facility in Bengaluru.

He added about his aim to upgrade the programmes run for various age groups in the new facility. The newly-inaugurated 40-acre facility has Ground A, which has 13 pitches made from Mumbai’s red soil. Grounds B and C serve are dedicated practice grounds with 11 Mandya soil pitches and nine black cotton soil pitches from Kalahandi, Odisha.

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The 45 outdoor net pitches for practice have been organised into nine clusters, and are made of Mumbai red soil, Mandya soil, Kalahandi black cotton soil, and concrete pitches, all separated by safety nets sourced from the UK.

“I think the programs we run, because all the best performers, right from your under-15 for women and under-16 for boys, are selected by the national selectors. During the off season from April till September, we have various programs. Like we conducted close to 32 camps during this period for both boys and girls.

“So with this infrastructure, three grounds, usually we have these matches of these camps conducted in different parts of the country. With KSCA, we get the Alur ground to have some of these camps. Whereas here with three grounds here, we can have a lot more programs. These grounds can be used to have some India A series, which can be played on these surfaces here.

“The most important thing is, with three different kinds of soils here (for the pitches), what we want is for the players to know how to adapt to different conditions in one place, instead of them traveling from one city to other city. They can have the experience and exposure of playing in different soils and different kind of pitches at one place, which will enhance their performance,” said Laxman to reporters in Bengaluru on Sunday.

He also spoke about the CoE’s efforts of maintaining a balance between rehab and fitness goals of the players, especially who are in the national set-up. “A player getting injured is part and parcel of any sportsman’s career. We will be fooling ourselves if you think that no one will get injured because you’re putting the body on the line. Working with a lot of these players, I know that how and what intensity they play the game with; so it’s bound to happen.”

“The idea is how to prevent injuries, and that’s why recovery, focusing on the fitness standards and maintaining it is something which is very, very critical. In fact, what we have done over the last two years is to standardize the fitness standards and the fitness levels right from top to bottom, it’s not only the Indian cricket team, but even the state teams have been given various protocols.

“The national players follow and everyone knows how to maintain that fitness levels and what kind of programs, and sessions they’re required to do to get to that fitness standards and levels so that when they come to the national team, they’re not starting from scratch, at least from that part of the game.

“As far as the skill is concerned, everyone may be different, but the fitness standards can be maintained. So both are very important because you’re required to upskill and we all know that when you’re competing against the best, you’re required to get better each and every day as a cricketer.”

“So when you upskill yourself knowing what are the areas to work on, then only you can progress, because anyone who’s stagnating and with amount of data and analytics which we have at our disposal, then a player can be easily found out. So if a player is fit, his/her fitness standards are improving day by day, I and we all believe that automatically their performance will also be enhanced; so both of them are very, very critical,” he elaborated.

Laxman, who played 134 Tests for India, assumed the CoE head role in December 2021, and admitted to being very reluctant to take up this responsibility. But on embracing this position, he talked about how it has been such a satisfying and fulfilling experience to plan, think and brainstorm for readying the next generation of cricketers and coaches.

“You’re dealing with not only the established international stars, but you’re creating the bench strength, and that has been very, very fulfilling to see the amount of talent and potential at our disposal. I can say with a lot of confidence, barring couple of skillsets, that next 10 years, we got a lot of players who will make our country proud.

“I’m not only talking about men’s, even I’m talking about women’s, and we are blessed to have that kind of talent. The whole idea is to how to monitor and groom them so that they realize their potential. For that, I’ve got a wonderful team, so we’ve got a head of education, Sujith Somasunder, and the head of sports science Nitin Patel, and then unbelievably experienced coaches.

“We’ve got two spin bowling coaches, Siraj Bahutule, Rajiv Datta, three batting coaches, Apurva Desai, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, and Sitanshu Kotak. One fast bowling coach, Troy Cooley, very experienced, we all know about Troy, and two fielding coaches, which is Munish Bali and Subhodeep Ghosh. So all these coaches and head of departments play a very important role in fulfilling the expectations I have from what we do.”