The National Cricket Academy (NCA) has added five players who were earlier selected in the juniors' list to the seniors list of trainees. Earlier 24 players had been selected for training at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore. The five players added to the seniors are: Swapnil Hazare, Nikhil Kulkarni (both Mumbai), Joginder Sharma (Haryana), Nitin Agarwal (Delhi) and Mrityunjay Tripathi. A letter to this effect have been sent by Academy Director Hanumant Singh to its chairman Raj Singh Dungarpur. The five trainees have been asked to report to Bangalore by May 14.

Hanumant Singh said "the camp will now concentrate on preparing the seniors for two tournaments - Coromandel Cup in Bangalore and Buchi Babu tournament at Chennai - to be held during August this year. The tournaments have been preponed by a month this season."

Hanumant said "it will also be decided at a later date whether to recall the seniors to the academy or ask them to disperse to prepare for the next season after the two tournaments."

The camp for the seniors started on May 1 and the camp for the juniors which was slated to commence from May 15 has been postponed by three months and is likely to begin on September 1. The first semester for junior trainees has been put off by a few months in order to enable them to take advantage of the next likely visit to India by the Academy's Australian consultant Rodney Marsh in September.

Former Indian player Hanumanth added that "during Marsh's visit in September more attention could be paid to the junior group because, by then, the senior group will have got accustomed to the new methods/schedules and become more self-reliant."

The NCA was inaugurated on May 1 with Roger Binny and Vasu Paranjpe as its coaches. It my be recalled that the former Australian wicker- keeper Rodney Marsh is the consultant of the academy. Marsh said he would visit the academy five times a year to monitor the progress of the the training programme.

The list of trainees who would benefit from the camp include Indian players Murali Kartik, S Sriram, Md Kaif and Harbhajan Singh. The chairman of NCA Raj Singh Dungarpur said, this was "the most ambitious scheme that the BCCI, in its long history, has undertaken". The BCCI has put in 1.5 crores during the first phase of the NCA's operations.

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