The Hindu : Sport : ‘Sreesanth is a strike bowler’

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Friday, Aug 03, 2007
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Sport

‘Sreesanth is a strike bowler’

Special Correspondent

Leicester: Venkatesh Prasad, India’s bowling coach, admitted on Thursday that S. Sreesanth could do with concentrating more on his bowling than his on-field posturing.

Asked if Sreesanth would be better served by bowling rather than indulging in gamesmanship, Prasad said, “To a certain extent, I would say yes. I have as bowling coach spent a lot of time talking to him one-on-one, quite a lot of time.”

But, Prasad defended his young charge, when asked if it might be a risk to play Sreesanth in the third Test at the Oval.

“I’d like to leave that decision to the team management,” said Prasad. “I’d rather not comment, but as far as I’m concerned, as a bowling coach, Sreesanth is a strike bowler.”

Sreesanth was fined 50 per cent of his match fees for shoulder-charging Michael Vaughan during the second Test at Trent Bridge — an incident-filled match that had its share of bad tempers, loose words, and mystery jelly beans.

Not exactly struggling

Was Prasad concerned with Sreesanth’s lack of control? “He’s not exactly struggling. I would rather not go too deep into it. He won us a Test match South Africa. He has fantastic body language — he’s aggressive, as long as it doesn’t cross the line — and his approach to the wicket, his seam position is all very good.”

Prasad backed Sreesanth’s explanation of the beamer to Kevin Pietersen: “It was a full toss that slipped out, and he apologised immediately.”

What about the no-ball, where Sreesanth over-stepped by nearly a metre? “I think he lost his jump on that,” said Prasad.

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