Former India opener Virender Sehwag has come out in support of talented players who have failed the Yo-Yo fitness test, saying that skill is important and fitness can be attained over time.
To emphasise his point, Sehwag added that if the Yo-Yo fitness test was a criteria for selection during his playing days, India greats such as Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and V.V.S Laxman would have never passed it.
Sehwag was responding to a question by a fan who had asked why Hardik Pandya, who was deemed unfit to bowl, was selected for the T20I series, but Chakravarthy was left out.
“I want to tell you one thing, here we are talking about yo-yo test. Hardik Pandya doesn’t have issues with running, he has issues with workload because of his bowling. However, (Ravichandran) Ashwin and Chakravarthy, on the other hand, haven’t cleared the Yo-Yo test, that’s why they aren’t here.
“But I won’t agree with all of this, if these criteria existed before, then the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman and Sourav Ganguly wouldn’t have passed it. I have never seen them pass the beep test. They always fell short of the 12.5 mark,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
The Yo-Yo fitness test has played an important role in the selection process so as to be named in the Indian squad. Recently, talented young cricketers such as Varun Chakravarthy and Rahul Tewatia failed to clear the test in the first round. In the second round, Tewatia managed to clear it and made it to the squad in the T20I series against England. Chakravarthy, however, failed to pass it still.
Sehwag further said that skill should be preferred over passing a test as fitness is something that can be improved over time.
“Skill is important, today if you are playing a fit team but don’t have the skills, then you would ultimately end up losing. Play them based on their skills, slowly you can improve their fitness over time but if Yo-Yo criteria is applied straight away, then the talks are different. If a player can field and bowl 10 overs, that should be enough, we shouldn’t be concerned about the other things,” he said.
Skipper Virat Kohli has previously championed the importance of fitness tests, highlighting the “very high levels of fitness” and adding that there is no compromise regarding that.
“We would expect players to abide by what’s required to be a part of Team India,” Kohli had said last month when asked about Chakravarthy’s fitness before the T20I series against England.
