Mahendra Singh Dhoni had the words ‘Have feet, will dance’ emblazoned in silver across his black sleeveless t-shirt, and while breaking into a jig would’ve been the last thing on his mind at the end of a gruelling three-hour session at the Ferozeshah Kotla on a searingly hot Monday afternoon, he did have enough left in the tank to want a round of badminton at the indoor courts (unfortunately, he and RP Singh couldn’t play for the lack of shuttlecocks).

The players hit top gear for a brief while even as the sun beat down upon them during a Team India fitness assessment session before another hard season ahead. It didn’t take long for Ashish Nehra and Praveen Kumar to shed their tops in an attempt to counter the heat, while Gautam Gambhir, Ishant Sharma, RP, Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh decided to stick to their Team India training gear.

The eight players completed the sprint-repeat schedule — running six sets between cones placed at variable distances — and the core training programme of push-ups, pull-ups and squats inside the gymnasium under the watchful eyes of coach Gary Kirsten, strategy head Paddy Upton and physio Nitin Patel even as fitness trainer Ramji Srinivasan noted down their Body Mass Index, heart rate and endurance levels. Nehra was spotted wearing a bandage on his bowling arm but the left-arm seamer is expected to be fit. Sources confirmed it was nothing serious and Nehra had suffered a slight bruise during fielding practice about a month back.

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