Daredevils physio focuses on strength, mobility screening

New Delhi: Delhi Daredevils physiotherapist Kirk Russell on Saturday set the ball rolling for the team`s campaign in the upcoming Indian Premier League, screening the players for strength and mobility. Even as Russell focussed on the players, skipper Virender Sehwag held a meeting with head coach Eric Simons and team mentor TA Sekar.

Russell, who was with the England team through more than 100 Tests and as many ODIs over a decade said the screening process was designed to help draw up a support programme for the players through the season and beyond. "We will incorporate the findings of our screening what I have measured and what Yoga expert Jim (Harrington) has seen in a support programme that will firstly help the players get stronger and more mobile and, secondly, prevent injuries from occurring," he said. "Of course, while looking at the screening results, we also look at injury history," Russell added. Russell said this was the third time he was screening some players. "We did that before IPL 2011 and during the training camp in September last. We have a good database of where each individual should be and also where we want the squad to be. They are given targets to reach and programs to work on when they go away from here as well," he said. Besides Australian batsman Aaron Finch and exciting young all-rounder Glenn Maxwell, the outstation players who have arrived in the capital are Venugopal Rao, Aavishkar Salvi, Shahbaz Nadeem and Prashant Naik as well as Manprit Juneja, Kuldeep Raval, Sunny Gupta and Zafir Patel. Asked about Aavishkar Salvi, who suffered a side strain during a Ranji Trophy match, Russell said the bowler has been playing competitive cricket for a month and a half now. "He has scored better with his trunk strength than last year. I sent him a training programme which I used with the England players for a long time and he said that it worked really well for him," he said. PTI