Day 1 at the Royal Challengers Bangalore Training Camp

The training camp of Royal Challengers Bangalore is underway in Chennai. The focus now shifts towards the run-up to the season opener on 9th April at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. After completing their mandatory quarantine, both the players and support staff expressed their eagerness to begin the 2021 Indian Premier League campaign.

On the first day of camp, there was a mix of young players who were recruited at the 2021 IPL auction as well as some familiar faces.

“We have got a good bunch of guys, let's see how it goes, so you have to believe in yourself; for me, like I don't believe in past or whatever. This is a new season this is a new team so everyone's excited, even I’m already excited,” said Yuzvendra Chahal on Bold Diaries.

Sanjay Bangar, the batting consultant, explained the training process planned, which would divide the players into two groups and place them in different scenarios.

“It's not very often that you have access to centre wickets and today being a such scenario wherein we've got good access to the ground and there's no time limit. We're going to make the most of it yes we've been in quarantine for the last seven days but all the players are fresh and raring to go. So from that perspective, we have five at the most six players coming today so we've sticked into two groups so that. The other group gets time to train and also finish their media,” said Sanjay Bangar.

“What we are doing going to do here is that put them in match simulations not especially with targets, but expose them to match scenarios which they're likely to encounter and really gauge. How they are going to adjust to the challenges and to the requirements of those scenarios so that is going to be the theme, we have six to seven scenarios lined up and it's gonna be quite fun and challenging for the boys,” Bangar added.

Mike Hesson, director of cricket operations, talked about the difference between this season and the one that ended in November. He also mentioned how, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many players haven't played much of the game quite of late. The 46-year-old has stressed the importance of being organised and preparing as if they were already playing against the opposition.

“It's quite different than last year, everybody's arrived haven't played a lot of cricket; they've obviously got to go through their quarantine. Once again it's not a matter of having to build up too much, just being really specific with the roles people are playing and out here wanting to have lots of open wickets stuff scenario training to put guys under pressure. We want to make sure that we prepare as though we're playing against our opposition,” said Mike Hesson.

We want one of everything, so we've split it that way, we don't have four days in a row and then go into a match day on day off day on day off. And you get a huge amount of volume in that work day and then do your training and elsewhere, so these conditions we've been able to organize, which is great we've got surfaces where we can change the nature of them which is good for us. We're obviously, going to play it at different venues, so rather than just preparing for the first game we've got to sort of start to prepare for throughout the whole sort of seven weeks,” added Hesson.