Guyana Amazon Warriors will be faced with 10 matches in 17 days. Due to the packed fixture, Ross Taylor believes the rest and recovery period will be important.
During an exclusive interview on the eve of the tournament, Taylor acknowledged that players would be in unchartered waters since they never played so much matches in such a short time. Taylor particularly noted that in all his 15-year international career never experienced such a challenge.
“At the end of the day it’s a lot of cricket and I don’t think I’ve ever played that amount of cricket in that time or scheduled to play this amount of cricket so it’s going to be a learning curve for everybody but as I said before your mental preparation is going to be very important but at the same time a lot of guys haven’t played a lot of cricket so rest and recovery and not being too hard on yourself if you haven’t scored runs or got wickets…Obviously you’ve got to give it your all first and foremost but your rest period becomes more important, if anything I think it’s very condensed but the CPL is also one of the toughest tournaments,” the 36-year-old said.
He went on to indicated however, with the tournament hosted solely in Trinidad and Tobago, the fatigue of inter-Island traveling has been negated.
Additionally, Taylor contended that due to the unusual situation due to COVID-19, a lot of players were not actively playing the game for as much as five months. This, he posited could pose a situation where players are rusty and more susceptible to injury.
The former New Zealand captain is of the opinion that the rotation of players and the management of training schedules will be critical especially taking into consideration the tournament is played during the rainy season.
“I think rest is going to be very important, how we rotate our bowlers, how we train, sometimes in such a condensed tournament having a rest day is sometimes better than having a training day but those decisions will obviously be made by the captain and coach and support staff but I think the thing that’s improved over the years especially around my years is teams are becoming a lot smarter about recovery and not just training for the sake of it,” he noted.
“It’s the rainy season so some games might be rain affected or rained out and I am sure that will come into play in terms of the thinking as well knowing that even if you do have a game day that it could rain and obviously the players are a bit fresher and you can stick with the same line up as well,” Taylor added.
