Video: Australian pacers practice bowling yorkers using a refreshingly innovative technique

In today’s day and age, we have witnessed various sporting units around the world using ingenious training methods to prepare themselves for the toughest of situations.

Be it Jurgen Klopp’s Footbonaut, where a player has to stand inside and enclosure and balls are fired at him from all sides or the bucket-ball, used by Pep Guardiola at Barcelona and Bayern Munich to improve players’ ball control, there is no dearth of inventive training techniques.

The sport of Cricket is not far behind either, with the ‘dummy catch’ method used by Sanjay Bangar to improve Indian fielder’s sharpness before World Cup 2015 or Waqar Younis’s drill to place a couple of shoes in front of the wicket and try and hit the toes.

Similarly, the Australian cricket team’s management has come up with one contemporary technique of their own. Trying to leave no stone unturned to keep their hopes alive for a berth in the semi-finals of the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy 2017, Oz pacers have been put to test by their coach in order to make their yorkers more accurate and precise.

In a video uploaded by cricket.com.au, the Aussie bowlers are seen practising ‘toe-crushers’ using a metal bar. The drill, called the bowling bar challenge, has a rod, which is placed at a height of 25 cms from the ground and the bowlers are expected to steam in and try to deliver the ball under the bar.

The Australian team has the likes of Mitchell Starc, James Pattinson, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and John Hastings in their ranks. However, only the former two were seen trying their hands at the drill with coach Darren Lehmann and Hazlewood standing next to the pitch.

While Pattinson manages to hit the bar twice, he fails to get the ball under it. However, Starc, who you can see coming close on a couple of occasions in the video, manages to perfectly get one of the deliveries go beneath the bar.

Australia, meanwhile, are currently taking on England in what is a do-or-die match for them and they’d be hoping that the rain Gods show some mercy for once and allow them a shot at getting the required couple of points so that they can reach the last four stage of the tournament.