'Big achievement': Jason Gillespie secures major appointment as Pakistan Test coach
Australian fast bowling great Jason Gillespie has been named head coach of Pakistan's Test team, as the nation overhauls its coaching department ahead of…
One of cricket’s all-time fastest bowlers says he wouldn’t have been able to play at top levels for 12 years under the modern workload.
Former West Indian speedster Michael Holding says too much cricket is taking its toll on fast bowlers and relatively young players like Brett Lee shouldn’t have to retire as early as they are.
“I know how difficult it was to maintain fitness and to bowl fast for an extended period of time,” Holding told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
“Although everyone is always talking about all the training that they are doing and they’re monitored so closely, you will get injuries.”
The answer to keeping fast bowlers on the field for longer, he believed, was simply less cricket.
“It’s just about monitoring them, about making sure that the workload is managed and see how long they can actually last,” he said.
Holding said it was telling that there were fewer super fast bowlers in the game in the modern era than 30 or 40 years ago, when every team had at least one outstanding quick.
“I’m not talking about somebody who just ran 30 metres and bowled a ball,” he said.
“I’m talking about somebody who bowled really fast.”
He was concerned the lure of Twenty20 would make Test cricket irrelevant as the highest form of the game.
“You have a young man here … Brett Lee – who I thought should have been playing for Australia for many more years than he actually did at the highest level – who withdrew from Test cricket to continue playing Twenty20,” he said.
“I don’t think that is good for Australian cricket or world cricket.”
Holding was joined in Canberra by fellow West Indies’ veterans Viv Richards and Joel Garner to promote the first games to be played under lights at Manuka Oval.
The West Indies play the Prime Minister’s XI at the ground on January 29 and face up to Australia in a one-day match on February 6.
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