Chennai: The MRF Pace Foundation Tuesday inked an agreement with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) which will send pace bowlers with potential to the academy for training under former Australian great Glenn McGrath.
The broad lines of the MOU includes a tie-up between the pace foundation and the BCCI for the next five years; BCCI to send existing and pace bowlers with potential to the academy to train under the Director of the Pace Foundation, McGrath; bowlers to be split into Elite and Probables categories; and training to be imparted in batches.
The Elite group includes all those pace bowlers who have been selected by the BCCI to play official matches as contracted by them.
There will be a maximum of 10 trainees per each camp and the duration of this session will be of two weeks. The selected pace bowlers can attend the camp during all three visits of McGrath in a year between January-February; June-July and August-September.
The first such training camp was scheduled to begin from Sep 1, 2014.
Probables include paces with potential as identified and shortlisted by national selectors. A total of 20 probables will train for 30 days. The trainees will be split into two groups of 10 and attend the camp in May-June and July-August.
The MRF Pace Foundation, which was launched in 1987, has since grown into a premier pace bowling academy in the world.
During this period, the Foundation has played host to several legends of world cricket, including Jeff Thompson, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Joel Garner and Rodney Marsh to name a few.
Speaking on the occasion, K.M. Mammen, Chairman and Managing Director, MRF Limited, said: "For the last 27 years, the MRF Pace Foundation has worked with a single minded focus of producing pace bowlers for India."
"Everything we have done at the Pace Foundation in terms of the tie ups we have entered into, the infrastructure we have invested in, the staff we have trained have all been planned with this single objective in mind."
As part of international agreements, the MRF Pace Foundation sends its trainees to England for special bio-mechanical testing and to Australia to play with the junior Australian cricket team in the Emerging Players tournament.
"It has been a wonderful couple of years for me at the MRF Pace Foundation. I now eagerly look forward to working with India's best at the foundation. Our facilities compare favourably with the best in the world and I am eagerly looking forward to this challenge,” said McGrath.
Some of the bowlers selected to train at the MRF Pace Foundation include Varun Aaron, Rahul Shukla, Ishwar Pandey, Ashok Dinda, Veer Pratap Singh, Deepak Chahar, Nathu Singh, Ankit Rajput, Anureet Singh, Shardul Thakur and C.V. Milind.
