New lease of life for Amanpreet

A couple of surgeries later,and months of rehab under Farhat,Amanpreet is trying to regain the lost ground. “I lost 10 months,I would rather say. I could have used this time to make progress in my bowling and career but I didn’t expect life had that in store for me….at least I decided to fight it out,” he says.

Amanpreet also knows it could have been worse. In that disorder,the blood supply to brain got affected,resulting in black outs but fortunately for him,the surgeries went well. He also knew how important it was for him to get proper rehab to attain full fitness: “After my rehab and six months training with Farhat,I am feeling fitter more than ever. I am able to extract more pace and I have regained my confidence level. Now I am more stable on back foot and front foot landing which has given me the ability to bowl more quickly and from a higher release point. I hope to deliver the goods for Kings XI Punjab in the IPL. The most important thing is that I am bowling at my best. The franchise and PCA backed me throughout the difficult phase.” Amanpreet has also played for India Under-19 team.

Sharing his expertise on Amapreet’s recovery,Farhat says,“I initially gave Amanpreet lots of low level lower limb and core training exercises. These formed the foundation of the strength work and more recent power work that he has been doing. A lot of the exercises involved bowling in specific positions and moved on slowly. There have been some setbacks in his training but he has worked extremely hard to overcome those. He has been extremely patient and his journey should inspire people from all walks of life who have had to overcome adversity. Over the past two months Amanpreet has worked extensively under the direction of Adrian Dias who is our newly appointed specialist strength and conditioning coach. In this time they have worked extremely well together and there have been massive improvements in Amanpreet’s strength,speed and endurance.” Farhat has been training Amanpreet since November 2009. Farhat adds,“I had to wait until he got final clearance from his neurosurgeon to commence training and then resume bowling. His attitude towards his comeback has been extremely positive and in many ways has given me the confidence to institute a lot of the training interventions that I had planned.”

The Mohali bowler will add to the Kings XI Punjab pace attack along with the likes of Brett Lee,Yousaf Abdullah,Irfan Pathan,S. Sreesanth,Love Abilish and Vikramjit Malik and VRV Singh,if at all he passes the fitness test.