The Board of Control for Cricket in India president Sourav Ganguly met the Head of Cricket of National Cricket Academy Rahul Dravid on Wednesday to discuss the future plans for the Bengaluru-based centre.
The proposed idea is to transform the NCA a state-of-the-art Centre for Excellence based on Cricket Australia’s High Performance Centre in Brisbane, according to a report in The Telegraph. The BCCI has a proposed budget of over Rs 100 crore for the project.
For the past few years NCA, which was supposed to be the supply line of Indian cricket, has become little more than a rehabilitation centre. But the revamp could change all that.
The new NCA will be built on the 40 acres of land purchased a while back near the Bengaluru airport. The plan is to have three grounds, indoor nets, administrative buildings, and the residential complex at the new venue. The NCA authorities aim to start by January end, continued the newspaper.
Cricket Australa’s centre near Brisbane sees the national team support staff as well as state associations work with the players and has sports science and medical facilities. It also includes a high-performance gym, 40m cricket training nets with analytics technology, a Pro-Batter, recovery pools, according to their official site. Cricket Australia’s Sport Science and Sport Medicine Unit is also administered from there.
India’s plan is to have a similar technical and scientific infrastructure with separate programmes for the A team, U-19, U-23 sides along with a residential programme. according to sources quoted by Telegraph. Cricket Australia runs several programmes for the men and women players from their centre as well.
“The NCA will include sports doctors, physiotherapists, strength & conditioners, dietitians, psychologists and biomechanists... It will look after the players’ mental and physical preparation and aim to reduce injuries. If a batsman has a problem with technique or a bowler with his action, the NCA will have all facilities to address it. Bowlers with suspect actions will also be able to get corrected there,” the source added.