Saturday 21 / December / 2024
Johannesburg: Cricket South Africa (CSA) has put a "conditioning block" on pace duo Marco Jansen and Gerald Coetzee to help them recover from their injuries.
Jansen and Coetzee have been absent from the fray since June this year. Jansen was rested from South Africa's series against the West Indies last month, and Coetzee got injured before the matches.
As of now, Jansen is nursing a shoulder concern, and Coetzee is recovering from a hip issue. CSA recognised the injury woes of the duo and decided to give them a rest to ensure that the duo remain at their best for their upcoming series.
"Both of these young players were presenting with chronic physiological and physical things are predisposed to fast bowling, so we realised that we had to step in. We have to give these guys the best chance of being able to perform. The workload on young cricketers has gone through the roof, especially guys who bowl fast. In order to ensure that their injuries didn't put up the stop sign [on their careers], we wanted to put them on a conditioning block," South Africa's white-ball coach, Rob Walter, said as quoted from ESPNcricinfo.
A similar approach has been adopted for their lead pacer, Kagiso Rabada. The experienced quick has been given an extended time off ahead of their jam-packed schedule.
South Africa's busy cricketing period will begin on September 18 against Afghanistan with a three-match ODI series.
The Proteas will then host India for a four-match T20I series before playing two Tests against Sri Lanka and then Pakistan. Following the conclusion of their red-ball series, South African players will engage in white-ball cricket during the SA20 and ICC Champions Trophy.
"If you look at what he has in store for him, starting when the Bangladesh Test series starts, it's non-stop cricket. When KG puts on a jersey for South Africa, we want him to deliver his best, and we've seen that when his pace is up, that's when he's most impactful and effective. It's just not possible to keep expecting him to do that if we don't provide these rest, recovery and conditioning windows. This was a perfect time to give him that opportunity. We don't have a lot of Test matches so to have our best bowlers available and firing for Test cricket is imperative. So there's a collaboration between myself, and Shukri [Conrad - the red-ball coach] to make sure that that happens," Walter added.
