PCB starts online fitness tests for its cricketers

With a lockdown in place because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Monday began online fitness tests for centrally contracted players, despite batsman Sohaib Maqsood suffering an injury during a similar exercise last week.

A PCB statement said the fitness assessments of Haris Sohail, Hasan Ali, Mohammad Abbas, Asad Shafiq, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Imad Wasim and Shadab Khan were conducted on Monday, while the remaining players will appear for their tests on Tuesday.

The PCB said the strength-and-conditioning coach of the national team, Yasir Malik, had designed the online tests and was supervising them with head coach and chief selector Misbah-ul-Haq.

“Yasir is in touch with the players through the Internet and video-streaming, and is also supervising their fitness tests individually,” a PCB official said.

Misbah had earlier emphasised that the Pakistan players need to remain in top physical shape and be ready for the challenges whenever intentional cricket resumes.

Pakistan is next scheduled to tour Holland, Ireland and England for Twenty20s, One-Day Internationals and Tests beginning early July, but uncertainty looms large over these series as the coronavirus outbreak shows no signs of relenting across the globe.

The England and Wales Cricket Board has set May 15 as the deadline to decide the fate of the Pakistan tour.

PCB chairman Ehsan Mani has said the board will be willing to support the ECB in every possible way on the scheduling of the tour, which is supposed to end in early September.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)