da 888casino： Stuart MacGill has been given a month to prove he is fit enough to cope with the heavy demands of Australia’s upcoming Test schedule
da apostaganha： Peter English in Hobart21-Nov-2007
Stuart MacGill had knee surgery last month and he was also struggling with numbness in his hand while bowling in Hobart © Getty Images
Stuart MacGill has been given a month to prove he is fit enough to cope with the heavy demands of Australia’s upcoming Test schedule. The back-to-back games that opened the summer severely affected MacGill’s recovering knee and the way he bowled in the second innings in Hobart cast doubt over his international future.Tim Nielsen, the coach, said MacGill had some seriouswork to do if he was going to be Shane Warne’sfull-time replacement. “That goes without saying,” hesaid. “We’ve got three blocks of back-to-back Teststhis summer and if you – not just MacGill but all theplayers – can’t physically cope there’s no way theplayers will give themselves the chance to executetheir skills the way they want. That’s as simple as itgets.”MacGill, who had knee surgery last month, now headsback to New South Wales and Nielsen expects him toplay in the two Pura Cup games before the first Testof the India series, which starts in Melbourne onBoxing Day. “You don’t need to be the fittest guy tobe competing on the international stage, but youcertainly can’t do the things you need to do for fivedays in a row unless you’ve got some physicalsoundness about you,” Nielsen said.”Legspin bowling, while it doesn’t look like thestrain of fast bowling, puts a lot of strain on kneesand shoulders. When one part of the action isn’tworking well it puts more stress on other parts. We’vegot to get him as fit as we can.”MacGill’s action wasn’t working well in Hobart and hedelivered some wild full-tosses in the second innings,when he gave away more than five runs an over and wastreated harshly by Kumar Sangakkara. It was aneventful game for MacGill as he battled numbness inhis hand before the knee problem bothered him over thefinal two days.”He bowled very well in Brisbane, but not quite aswell here,” Nielsen said. “He’s found it difficultcoming back from knee surgery six weeks ago and he hadtrouble backing up. We probably didn’t make it anyeasier for him by enforcing the follow-on inBrisbane.”Nielsen is an upbeat character and he was so edgybefore the first game at the Gabba that his wife hadto talk to him about calming down. “She said you can’tbe like this before every Test,” he said. “I’ve been abit more relaxed this week with things being a bitmore normal.”He has tried not to change much in the successful Testset-up, but he brought the players together to discusswhat they wanted to achieve in Australia’s new era.”We’ve done a bit of work on how we want to beperceived as a group,” he said. “We’ve refreshed ourideas a bit there and I’m pleased to see the playersgrab hold of that.”It’s not so much behaviour, we understand where thegoal posts are. There’s been a lot of talk about thenew era so we talked about how this team is going togo about it and make sure that people see that. Thatdoesn’t happen by fluke. We renewed those ideas anddragged some thoughts from the senior guys about thenext nine Tests or so.”Australia’s win in Hobart was their 14th in a row, butthe attempt on the record of 16 is not something thatwill consume Nielsen. “I wasn’t involved in the past,”he said. “At the moment it’s 2-0, that’s all I’mconcerned about. Now we need to start again forIndia.”
