Varun Chakravarthy had just finished an obligatory long bowl on the practice pitches. Away from the main arena, Tilak Varma was hard at work at the adjacent nets, receiving throwdowns. More Morkel, the bowling coach, kept throwing glances at his wristwatch as he walked-run around the perimeter of the MA Chidambaram Stadium. Ahead of their first must-win encounter against Zimbabwe in the T20 World Cup on Thursday, India took the ‘optional’ training session to heart, with only the aforementioned two players feeling the need to top up their skills.

This duo, and 12 of the other 13 members – Rinku Singh was given leave of absence to visit his ailing father — had an extended, extensive stint on Tuesday night that ran to nearly four hours. There was focus on range-hitting, obviously, but there were also numerous discussions between Gautam Gambhir and Sitanshu Kotak, the coaches, on one side and different batters at different stages on the other, including Tilak, the hapless Abhishek Sharma, his touted replacement Sanju Samson and skipper Suryakumar Yadav.