The former Pakistan legend Javed Miandad has an interesting piece of advice for the former Indian wicket-keeper and the current CSK skipper MS Dhoni who is going through a tough time in possibly the last season of his cricketing career.
Miandad recalls that he also had a very hard time while playing cricket towards the end of his career because as you grow old as a player, your reflexes slow down and you don’t react to the deliveries and get into positions as quickly as you should.
But, Miandad says he used his brains and adjusted his training accordingly to make sure he continued contributing to the team’s cause even at an older age when he was probably not the best version of himself.
According to Miandad, MS Dhoni can do that as well, but he will now have to make sure that he hits twice as many deliveries in the nets as he used to hit at the peak of his career.
Miandad reckons when a batsman is at his peak, he can afford to not hit that many deliveries in the nets and he might still come out and perform in a game situation, but when someone gets old, the reflexes aren’t quite the same and hence, to react to the balls quicker, one needs to hit a lot of deliveries in the nets.
“My suggestion to Dhoni will be to increase his exercise drills and batting time at the nets. If he is doing 20 sit-ups (for example), he can increase it to 30. If he doing five sprints, he can increase it to eight. If he is spending an hour at the nets for batting practice, he can increase it to two hours,” Miandad was quoted as saying by Indian Express.
Miandad, in the last ODI World Cup of his career in 1996, was only a pale shadow of himself. Playing in the quarter final of that tournament against India, which also proved to be his last international game, Miandad was continuously struggling to get the big shots away. Miandad eventually got run out in that game, pretty much the same way as Dhoni’s international career ended with a run out in World Cup semi-final against New Zealand last year.
