Why a mandatory DEXA and YOYO Test for Indian Cricketers is a bandaid solution to help the selectors?

Image Credit: BCCI / insidesport.in

The lastest news coming out of the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) is that YoYo Test (a test for cardiovascular endurance) and the DEXA (a bone density scan) are now mandatory for players of the Indian National Team. I have spent close to two decades working with professional cricketers and in that time, its safe to say, I have witnessed and been party of this exact same policy being put in place at least a dozen times.

Here are my thoughts on why this fails every single time?

Right up front, making a test like a YoYo and Dexa mandatory is simply an exercise in governance that is aimed to create the perception that an area of concern is being looked into. This does not have the players concerns or the teams wellbeing at heart and worst of all, it significantly disadvantages fringe players.

Let’s deep dive into this:

1. The YoYo Test: This has been an age old fitness test used by countless teams (domestic and international) for years. It is a multi-stage test run between two beacons 20 m apart. Over the course of the test, the time allocated to complete shuttles reduces, testing a players speed, cardiovascular endurance and agility. This test replaced that traditional 1 mile and Cooper 1.5 mile run test because it was believed that the shuttle runs replicated match situations more accurately. Whilst this is true, the test only really get physically tough (by international athelte standards) after level 10 (12.5 kmph). Each stage is roughly 40 seconds which means for an Indian cricketer to pass this test, he would need to run moderate to vigorously for about 4.25 minutes in total. This is important information. An athlete who can maintain a 4.25 min per km pace consistently for an hour is running at a relative speed fo 14kmph. At this speed, they would finish a simple Cooper 1.5 mile run between 10.30–10.45 minutes which would not qualify them into pretty much any elite sports team in the world. This means that even if you pass the test by running at 15.5 kmph for the 40 seconds required at level 16.5, you are still not anywhere near fit enough to complete the 1.5 mile in an acceptable time. The Cooper 1.5 mile Run Test is the test used by the many professional football teams, the US Navy, FBI and secret services (to atest to its credibilty). Almost every cricketer I have worked with (and there have been 1000’s of pro’s), less than 5% would ever complete a 1.5 Cooper 1.5 Mile in <9.45 — the standard these guys should be at and almost all would pass the YoYo.
2. The Cooper 1.5 Test, as simple as it is, has phenomenal benefits. Anyone can run this test on themselves anywhere, anytime. This benefit is that it creates a system in which aspiring cricketers, and domestic and club teams without resources can test their players inexpensively. Given that a cricketer would have to cover a distance of between 9–18km in a match depending on the format, and be on their feet for between 2–6 hours in a day, you would think that this would be a test we opt for. Now, everything I am saying makes scientific science, so what is the problem. Very simply put, there is no where to hide. The simpler the test, the quicker the rubber hits the road.
3. Cricket is a game and like many other games, physical supremacy is not a pre-requisite to be successful. There are countless cricketers who are not in physically fit enough to pass this test but are successful by any measure. Implementing true physical criteria for selection would mean you need to at times drop players who are performing well. This cannot happen because you don’t win a World Cup on the Cooper Run test or Yoyo score — you win with runs and wickets. And if the argument is that physical fitness doesn’t guarantee success but increases the probablity of it, the pass mark should be closer to level 18, not 16.5.
4. The DEXA Scan is another interesting development. The BCCI sites that injured players returning to play must be cleared by a DEXA bone density test and body composition scan. This test has excellent test-rest validaty in sport. Having said this, in order to accurately use this test, you would need significant data from the healthy individual to accurately assess return to sport. The other issue is that bone abnormalities when rehabilitated will feel functionally stronger way before a bone density scan reveals this. Hot spots in bone density scan can be present for a signficantly longer time post full recovery which we why a good orthopedic surgeon will never fully go by scan results. This variance creates a significant loophole to bias or discriminate against players.
5. I began by saying this system will fail and here is why:

• BCCI — ‘Players would have to play a substantial domestic season to qualify’. What is substantial?
• The current system incentivises players who train harder but not those who scores runs or take wickets. You cannot have standardised selection criteria that spans across the board. Meaning, a cricketer who scores 900 runs would have spent more time at the crease than a cricketer who scores 400 runs in a season. The athlete who scores 900 runs has to be incentivised to recover and not penalised for not training. There can never be standardisation of physical criteria in professional team games.
• The reason why they put this in place is to try to manage workload. If you want them to spend time in a gym, you have to put workload restrictions on game time and practice time at IPL or domestic level. This cannot happen because you are dictating the operations of a professional team which impacts their performance and team dynamics.
• Throughout this article, I highlighted a few flaws in the their thinking. The solution is not as easy as ‘do not do this’ and ‘do this’. The truth is, and every coach and medical support staff know this, there is no one plan. You cannot create a system that is governed by a simple test or excel sheet to balance the myriad of variables the Indian Cricket Team would need to win. Variables like practice times and game time that keep a player sharp, workload management during practice and matches for bowlers, recovery time, rehabilitation time, down time for mental health, strength training time which has to happen all year round due to a prolonged season, and much more. How on earth is it possible to manage all this by putting a standardised selection criteria in place?

Here is the truth: No on is expecting any of these tests to be done or stringent measures to be put in place to manage workload or look after the mental health of players. If you go back in time and study exactly when these policy’s were put in place, you would notice that they are always months away from a big tournament like the Cricket World Cup, not even the IPL. These policy’s are simply to create the canvas that allows selectors to pick the team they want.

I am writing this from my experience of being in the system.

Why am I saying this now? Honestly, I have dedicated a large part of my life to working in professional sport because I care about athletes. They are the ones who sacrifice almost everything to try to make it. It scares me that almost two decades after I started, the exact same tricks are being used. No one knows who is going to be the victim of this but I can promise you, someone will.

If you care about the athletes, start asking questions like, ‘what is substantial, or where is the database that will determine what is baseline for each individual? All of this may help, but the biggest loophole and the one they will always defer to: fitness data is medical data and medical data is ring fenced by confidentiality.

You have have a few thoughts, you can write to me on connectwithshayamal@gmail.com