R Sridhar, the Indian team's fielding coach, the catching practice machine has done wonders so far to their catching
Team India. Pic/AFP
If India are dropping less catches since the England tour, it is because of a new 'member' in the team - a catching practice machine. It is similar to how a bowling machine looks but it's much smaller in size and weighs just 22kgs. Developed by Leverage, a Hyderabad-based sports and technology company, in consultation with R Sridhar (he calls it teammate), the Indian team's fielding coach, the catching practice machine has done wonders so far to their catching.
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"The Indian team are very happy with our innovation. Sridhar literally pushed me to modify this machine which we had innovated five years ago. We have made it portable and the catching drills can be provided with actual cricket balls unlike the pimple balls, which was the case earlier," said Partha Premmaraju, the managing director of Leverage. The plan now is to make it a multi-purpose machine that can provide catching and bowling practice. Seeing the improvement in India's catching, other national boards and English counties have already placed their requests.
Uppal passes Test
After Rajkot, one of the six new BCCI Test centres, attracted poor crowds in the opening Test against the West Indies, it was believed that perhaps the contest between World No 1 ranked India and World No 8 West Indies is not exciting enough. The crowd response at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium for the second Test was encouraging. On Day One the attendance figures read 9,241. Day Two [Saturday] began with 9,514 in attendance and it shot up to 18,555 during the day as Team India came out to bat. Yesterday, over 18,000 people watched the match.
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