Maintaining prime fitness is one of the inviolable tenets of the current Indian team. The captain Virat Kohli leads the way by being a role model in this department. It's not surprising therefore, that the Indian team is ahead of competition when it comes to distance being covered while batting.
Myprotein, a sports nutrition brand, did an interesting research on the participating teams of the World Cup. They analysed the players and teams on a variety of indicators related to their physical condition.
Results of survey
Apart from measuring the height and speed of the players, they also checked the amount of distance covered by them while scoring runs. What Myprotein research found out is rather interesting. Amongst all the teams, India leads the way in terms of miles run while putting runs on the board. The batsmen from Men in Blue, who are in the World Cup squad, have run a total of 521 miles while scoring runs in ODIs. That is more than the distance between Mumbai and Nagpur!
The difference between them and the second place team – England – is vast. The hosts of the World Cup have covered only 362 miles. This means two things: One, that this group of Indians have been scoring a lot of runs and two, many of them have come through singles, twos and threes.
Here also, the man leading the way is Kohli. At the time of the survey, he had 10,843 runs in ODIs and, if we were to take 9 miles/per hour as his average speed, had spent the equivalent of 15 hours in running for these runs. The distance he has travelled comes approximately to 218 km, more than the distance between Delhi and Agra.
What is most interesting is that India are on the top of another list, one which is not all that complimentary. They are the shortest team in the tournament in terms of average height. Taken together, the average height of players is 1.74 metres. Not surprisingly, the tallest men in the World Cup are from West Indies – 1.84 metres. Their captain, Jason Holder, is the tallest – 2.01 metres while Bangladesh's Mushfiqur Rahim is the shortest – 1.60 metres.
Another interesting fact that reveals the amazing nature of cricket is the speed of the ball delivered by pacers. When the ball is delivered at a speed in the range of 85-90 kilometres, it travels across the length of the pitch in just 0.23 seconds, that's more than the speed of Cheetah. Even spinners, bowling in the range of 45-60 miles/per hour, take just 0.4 seconds to make the ball travel the entire length of the pitch. To put it simply, batting ain't easy.
