My biggest achievement is a fit Shami: India’s fitness coach

Southampton, June 19

Virat Kohli is the quintessential “teacher’s delight” but it is injury-prone Mohammed Shami, in his current fit avatar, that India’s strength and conditioning coach Shankar Basu considers his biggest achievement since joining the team. For the 50-year-old, who has had two stints with the side starting 2015, the satisfaction comes from making a fitness freak out of an injury-prone Shami or even a Kedar Jadhav, who till 31-32, didn’t do any proper fitness training. “Virat is any teacher’s delight. His biggest attribute is that he is ready to do boring stuff every single day of the year. He knows his body and if he is training, he will have 100 questions. Once he gets the answers, he follows them with all sincerity,” Basu said. A new and improved Shami didn’t miss a single Test match last season due to injury and maintained his intensity throughout. “He failed a fitness test last year and also had some issues in his personal life. Once he came back, he started training with a vengeance. I had told Shami that there is no point of training hard for 20 days. You have to train consistently. Now training is his lifestyle. Look at how his pace never drops even in the final test of a five-game series,” Basu said. pti