India have very few off-spinners’

New Delhi, March 19: Former India coach Greg Chappell on Wednesday echoed chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar’s stand that the country did not have any extraordinary talent at the junior level. "There are a lot of talented youngsters in India but they are all on the same level... nothing extraordinary," Chappell said at a function to announce the winners of the Delhi leg of a Twenty20 Cricket Star talent hunt.
Of the 1,200 aspirants who turned up for the trials at the Jamia Milia Islamia university grounds in Delhi, Chappell zeroed in on just five — Naman Sharma from Ghaziabad, Gaurav Goel from Meerut, Abhishek Singh from Delhi, Bharat Awasthi from Kanpur and Ravindra Solanki from Bareilly — who will undergo a 10-day coaching camp starting March 21 at an academy in Jaipur under Chappell.
In all 24 players will be shortlisted from seven cities, with one of them getting a contract to play for the Rajasthan Royals team in the 2009 season of the Indian Premier League. Apart from them another 10-12 players will be taken in for a six-month coaching camp to be conducted by the Rajasthan Cricket Association.
The former Australian captain felt that heavier willows had brought about a sea change in the way youngsters played cricket. "I have seen a predominant tendency among youngsters to use heavier bats which means they will become more of bottom-handed players," Chappell said.
"This will make them push the ball more rather than a hit it." After visiting six cities and having taken a close look at about 4,000 aspiring cricketers along with his assistant Ian Fraser, the former bio-mechanist with the Indian team, Chappell found that India had very few off-spinners.
"Most of those we saw, interestingly, were left-arm finger spinners. There were very few off-spinners," he said.
Asked whether the Twenty20 format would result in more player burnout, Chappell said: "It all depends on a player’s agility and stamina. We will lay a lot of stress in our camps on enhancing the physical skills and adaptability of a player and would also try to make them stronger emotionally."
Fraser said Indian boys were physically less mature than their counterparts in the same age groups elsewhere.
"Diet is one important aspect. Physically they need more work. The body needs to stand up to the rigours of international sport," he said.