Nine pace bowlers attended CSA's two-day elite fast bowling camp

Earlier, a 21-member squad underwent a week-long camp at Senwes Park in Potchefstroom for physical conditioning and routine cricket training from September 28 to October 1.

The selected players were divided into two groups of six and went through the same training regimen as the 10-member men’s High-Performance training camp which was conducted last week.

South Africa internationals Ayabonga Khaka, Masabata Klaas, Anneke Bosch, Tumi Sekhukhune, Faye Tunnicliffe and Zintle Mali were among the nine players attended the camp.

Uncapped trio of Michaela Andrews, Khayakazi Mathe and Nobulumko Baneti were the other three players in the camp. Baneti was impressive during the 2019-20 domestic season taking 17 wickets across two formats.

The main objective of the camp was tor fast-track the development of the identified players. They worked on optimising their bowling action, physical conditioning as well as injury prevention and resolution.

“It’s great that CSA has put these camps together,” Klaas said. “The technology they now have available is really world-class and gives us so much more insight into what we are doing, how we are doing it and what we need to do to be better.”

“We’ve seen that by following some of the feedback of the coaches, in relation to the technology, we’ve managed to increase our pace.”

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Vincent Barnes, CSA bowling lead and high-performance manager, expressed his satisfaction about how the camp went about.

“I was again really happy with what I saw by this group of bowlers,” Barnes said. “We have some seriously talented fast bowlers in South Africa, both men and women, and with the right nurturing they have the ability to progress all the way to the top.”

“This week we had a nice mixture of men and women attend the camp. It was just basically to check if there (are) ways of keeping them injury-free.”

Strength and conditioning coaches and physiotherapists put the players through Musculoskeletal screening, speed and fitness testing. The coaches will continue the monitor the players when they return to their respective domestic sides.

The process of the camp initially included musculoskeletal Screening, strength, speed and fitness testing. This is an area that franchise strength and conditioning coaches (S&Cs;) and physiotherapists will continue to monitor and attend to once the players have returned to their teams.

CSA’s High-Performance unit is currently building a database of the bowlers with main focus on video analysis to enable more effective player management depending on their bowling characteristics.

“The initial tests we did earlier in the year were on players that had injuries and we were trying to investigate why they were picking up these injuries, and now it’s about trying to make sure they stay injury free and how we can even improve them,” Barnes concluded.