Teams deal with warm-up games conundrum

Most teams were busy rotating players in international fixtures with less than a week remaining for the warm-up games. It has resulted in a majority of teams not taking the warm-up games seriously. Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan preferred to rest during his team’s warm-up tie against Sri Lanka on Friday.

“Not much to gain for us. Priority is to look after the players. Just a formality.”

That was the crux of India captain Rohit Sharma’s brief chat with the host broadcaster after winning the toss against England in Saturday’s World Cup warm-up match.

No wonder then that India would not have been too disappointed when a thunderstorm that started minutes before the start of play washed the game out. As a result, India left for Thiruvananthapuram for its last warm-up game with only four players training on the pre-match day.

The fact that three of the five warm-up games so far have been washed out has resulted in questions being raised - more than the scheduling and selection of venues - on the importance and requirement of warm-up games.

Most teams were busy rotating players in international fixtures with less than a week remaining for the warm-up games. It has resulted in a majority of teams not taking the warm-up games seriously. Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan preferred to rest during his team’s warm-up tie against Sri Lanka on Friday.

It shows that there has been a sea-change in the manner in which the teams look at warm-up games over the last few decades. At a time when there were no warm-up games, it was the pre-World Cup probables camp that used to be the hunting ground for cricket captains to hunt for an X-factor.