Despite all the hype surrounding Ishant in our cricket media he hasn’t picked up too many wickets in the recent New Zealand series. In fact he was cluttered around the park for many spells in the last 2 test matches. This surely wasn’t the case in the last 2 series in India which were played in far more batsman friendly conditions and against better opposition(Australia & England). Ishant to me looks just tired with all the workload he has had to bear in the last 12 months with little or no rest in between – 13 test matches, 17 ODI’s 3 T20’s. He has already suffered 1-2 niggles and his pace seems to be not holding up in long spells.

Ishant is of course not an isolated case our team management’s recent handling of fast bowlers in general has been spotty to say the least. Young bowlers who start their careers bowling at 140 kmph either become medium pacers or are riddled with career delibiting injuries – Munaf, RP Singh, Sreeshanth, Balaji all have struggled with injuries in recent seasons. Irfan Pathan of course seems to have now almost become a part time bowler/T20 specialist after Greg Chappel’s experiments with his bowling action. The primary reason seems to be our busy schedule of one day matches every year. Fast bowlers have not been rotated and people like Ishant and Zaheer are expected to play in most matches in every format of the game. Clearly in batsman frienly formats like one dayers and T20 games it’s not required to play our best bowlers all the time. If we do have serious aspirations of being the best test team it’s highly imperative that ‘fast bowlers‘ -  probably our most precious asset for winning matches abroad are handled with care.