Rajat Bhatia L and T Natarajan. Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
The era of modern cricket has developed over a period of time to an extent that coaches do not want their marquee players to play game after game. Hence, giving rest to players to stay supremely fit has been in the trend for quite some time. Recently, as SRH locked horns against MI in Match 9 of the IPL 2021, coach Tom Moody stated that T Natarajan’s exclusion from the team is due to "workload management".
During an interaction with SportsTiger at the mid-innings break of SRH vs MI game, former KKR player Rajat Bhatia was asked about the 'workload management' term to which he started by stating, “It’s an excuse, every Indian bowler is playing IPL with injury.”
Knowing that T Natarajan is an expert to bowl at the death, his ability to restrict the dangerous and hard-hitting MI batting line-up could have come in handy for SRH as they have already lost both their opening encounter.
Here is what Rajat Bhatia said on 'workload management':
In SportsTiger's 'Mid-Wicket Live' show, Rajat Bhatia said, “As we all know there are a lot of players in the Indian cricket team who are carrying an injury around. Talking about T Natarajan or rather any other bowler as well, when they play consecutive games, our National Cricket Academy doesn't have the assurance about the fitness.”
“The Academy works with the mindset of restricting the player after 2-3 games for the purpose of saving them. So, these are the instructions given for all the bowlers, especially after keeping in mind the T20 World Cup, which was going to held later this year... Given how T Natarajan is bowling, he can surely be a part of the Indian squad for the T20 World Cup,” Bhatia concluded.