3 unsung heroes who deserve appreciation for India's Asia Cup win

After grueling 14 days of hard-fought encounters, it was the Indian team who managed to have their hand on the beautiful trophy of Asia Cup for the seventh in the history of this tournament.

India started off their campaign against Hong Kong which proved to be a near nightmare for India as they managed to negate the Hong Kong scare. However, the Indian team covered that up with a fantastic performance against Pakistan while marking off their presence in the league.

The Super Four stage proved to be a clinical affair for India as they marched to the finals of the Asia Cup 2018. However, the finals proved to be an arduous task for India as they had to fight hard for their record seventh title.

Sans Virat Kohli, it was an even performance from all the members of the India team to win the title. However, there are quite a few unsung heroes who had a decisive part to play in the ploy of the Indian team.

Behind every successful man, there is a hand of a woman. Similarly, behind a successful outing of any team in a major tournament like the Asia Cup, there is a big hand of generous support staff.

Thus, in this feature, we will be talking about the recent contributions of three exclusive members from the support staff of the Indian team.

---

#1 Patrick Farhart: Lead Physiotherapist

Lead Physiotherapist to Indian Cricket team, Patrick Farhart has been an influential member of the Indian team for quite a long time now. He has also been a part of some dedicated teams like Australia, Kings XI Punjab, Sydney Sixers and many more.

Having 22 years of experience in the clinical management of musculoskeletal injury in professional sporting teams, Patrick has to keep track of clinical management of players within the Indian national team.

With a lot of workload hovering around the Indian team members, the job of a physiotherapist scales quite high, particularly while following the fitness of India's premium players who play all the three formats. Besides that, Patrick's importance of the role clarifies more in the case of prevention of injuries. Although it seems an easy job, there goes a lot behind the curtains.

Well, there have been many such occasions where you would have seen the physio running very hard in the field in case of injuries. One such episode happened recently in the final game between India and Bangladesh where Kedar Jadhav got his hamstrings stretched, and Patrick had to rush into the field to learn about the severity of the injury.

Although Jadhav was forced to leave the filed, the Indian support staff did manage to keep Kedar match ready which helped the Indian team to take the game deep.

Thus, no matter how naive it might sound, the Indian support staff, particularly Patrick, deserve a decent share in India's success at the global level as a cricketing superpower and much so for the Asia Cup win.

#2 Raghavendra (Raghu): India's throw down specialist

Raghavendraa, fondly known as Raghu, has been a crucial member of the Indian support staff for a long time now. The throw down specialist, with a baby face and a lean physique, is known to be the best in the business with an ability to throw balls at a great pace and for the genuineness of the throw down sessions.

Virat Kohli openly admires the role he has played in fine-tuning his art at the batting crease. It is worthy to note that Raghu has has been traveling with the national side for his techno-scientific skill. Raghu formally joined the Indian support staff in 2011.

The results have been quite marvellous, especially among the Indian top order. It has helped the Indian batsmen to judge the length of the ball quite early and play respectively. “The success of a batsman does not get much significance for those who work for him behind the scenes. But I believe that Raghu has made me very strong, by helping me practice at the speed of 140 kph,” recognized Kohli, during the 2017 Champions Trophy in England.

Besides, Raghu also had a decent role to play in India's acclimatization to the gripping pitches of Dubai. Before the start of the tournament (Asia Cup), the Indian team had some brief throw down sessions which were in sync with the expected pace and bounce of the pitch in Dubai.

Interestingly, Raghu had also denied cash-rich offers from some other international team as he is entirely devoted to the Indian team.

#3 Nuwan Seneviratne: A left-handed throwdown specialist

Nuwan Seneviratne: India's new throw down recruit

Before the start of the tournament, the cricket fans and pundits were talking about Rohit Sharma's sorry performances against the left-handed fast bowlers. Besides, the discussion grew more intense as Rohit was to face the likes of Mohammad Amir, Shaheen Afridi, Mustafizur Rahman, and Usman Khan in the tournament.

Nonetheless, the claims were rugged off the moment we saw Rohit hitting those long sixes to the Amir and Usman. Well, a fair share of credit goes to the new recruit Nuwan Seneviratne - a left-handed throw down specialist.

Seneviratne is a 38-year-old from Colombo who has two first-class matches to his name for Colombo Cricket Club. In addition to that, being a left-hander, he is known to create angles in the nets that the Indian batsmen were beforehand only used to in match scenarios.

"We saw him in Sri Lanka when we were playing there. Of course, we have two right-handers who do throwdowns for us, so we wanted to bring in that change because left-handers are important," said Rohit in a press conference before the start of the Asia Cup 2018.

Although Seneviratne has just joined the Indian setup, he deserves a fair share of credit for India's supremacy against the left-handed bowlers in the recently concluded Asia Cup.