Duleep Trophy | Gurnoor goes old school: the more you bowl, the stronger you become

At a time when fast bowlers in India are being wrapped in cotton wool, Gurnoor Brar appears to be cut from a different cloth.

The tall Punjab and North Zone pacer, who has been fast-tracked into the India ODI and Test set-up, is neither averse to operating for long periods on unhelpful wickets nor holds himself back from bowling at high pace.

“It is very important to have a good mindset,” Gurnoor told reporters at the BCCI Centre of Excellence here, where he took four wickets for 88 runs against South Zone in the Duleep Trophy semifinal on a largely sedate pitch.

“If we go into the game thinking ‘there is nothing in the surface,’ we are already behind. I try to make the batsman feel I’m always in the game. That’s the motive I go into every game with — take the wicket out of the equation,” the 26-year-old added.

Gurnoor bowled nearly a fourth of North Zone’s overs, dismissed four of the top-six, and routinely beat batters for pace.

“Pace is very important for me,” he said. “But there are advantages and disadvantages. If we don’t stick to the right lines and length, runs can flow.

“From the beginning, I have always believed in training my body to high loads. No matter how much I bowl, it should not matter.

“There is a need for breaks, obviously. [But] I have an old fast bowler’s mindset: the more you bowl, the stronger you become.”