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The Cricket Interview/Wayne Phillips

The ACA is getting raves for producing talented players by the dozen -- what accounts for this success, would you say? What actually happens to an inmate of the academy?

The programme is tailored for that, like I said. First, all those who are sent to the Academy are resident-students, staying there for nine months in the year, between April and December. During this period, the only time they travel out of Adelaide if their respective states want them to play in some representative matches.

When a player joins the academy, he is first examined by physios, psychologists, fitness experts, doctors, bio-mechanists, dieticians... it's an exhaustive examination and at the end of it, an individual training programme is prepared just for him. The thinking is, no two athletes are alike, so having a common programme for everybody doesn't make sense.

While the individual programmes are meant to enhance each players skills, strength, speed and endurance, there are also common programmes meant to give the trainees a greater body awareness, and mental and psychological skills needed to cope with specific situations in the field.

For each trainee, the daily routine includes an early morning training session that focusses on strength and fitness, then an afternoon session devoted to specific skills, depending on whether he is batsman, bowler, keeper, what have you.

And what makes the whole thing work, I guess, is the monitoring, which is very minute. Each trainee is expected to maintain his own documentation, which includes a daily personal report that evaluates his sleep, diet, state of health, reaction to that day's training and such; a daily training diary setting out precisely what he did, and learnt, on each day; a work-load diary especially for fast bowlers, to make sure that no one is overbowled; a personal game development memo in which each player enters his own perception, each day, of performance, coaching he has received, and such. And all this is evaluated by us daily, and programmes for individual athletes modified as and when we feel the need.

Remember I am only hitting the high spots here -- there is video analysis of each trainee on a daily basis, there are regular trips to the AIS headquarters in Canberra for biomechanical analysis in the lab there, where the doctors use high speed film and other methods to analyse each player... plus, we also give the trainees media training, public speaking, public relations... the works... because we have to keep in mind that these blokes, at some stage down the line, will be representing Australia at the international level...

With all due respect, aren't you in danger, with this kind of programme, of producing bionic cricketers? Mechanical, soul-less cricket-playing machines programmed like so many robots?

You mean we are in danger of cloning? No, not at all, actually. See, point is we aren't producing cricketers in a mould. Look at our alumni, for instance -- the ones who came through the system and are now playing at the highest level. The cricket academy produced Shane Warne -- our first trainee to break into the Australian team, actually -- and he is as individualistic as they come, right?

In these ten years, we have also produced Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Brendon Julian, Jason Gillespie, Glenn McGrath, Michael Slater, Michael Bevan, Ricky Ponting, Greg Blewett, Stuart Law, Michael Kasparowicz, Shane Lee, Adam Gilchrist, Peter McIntyre -- all outstandingly talented young players, but if you watch them play, you don't find them all fitting into any mould, do you?

The basic idea behind the academy is to take available talent, and to enhance it, to hone it and ensure that the player gets the best returns on his ability. I guess in our time, we each had to reinvent the cricketing wheel 'cause there was no formal coaching. Now, with the academy, what we do is shorten the learning curve, by putting the wealth of available experience at the disposal of each trainee.

You used the word "bionic" -- which I guess is because of the use of doctors, biomechanists, psychiatrists and stuff. Again, that is not quite true -- look, you can have a player like Dean Jones, brilliant runner between wickets and a natural athlete. You could have another superb batsman, young bloke, with strokes all round the wicket, but a dud at running between wickets. And that could be because his sprinting skills are not well developed. In such a case, a fitness expert would be able to teach him foot-speed, enhance his sprinting skills -- all of which make him a better player. Or for instance, there could be a player who has all the shots in the book but gets, say, easily bored out there, throws his wicket away too quickly. Sports psychiatrists and psychologists could help him with his motivational levels, attention span... get him to focus more intensely, go longer without 'getting bored'.

And this trip your ACA boys are making here, is it part of the training programme?

Yes. We are here in Madras for two weeks, for practise sessions that also involve friendly games with different scratch sides. Then we move on to Sri Lanka, for two more weeks. The boys here are in the age group of 17 to 20, all are talented, we see all of them making it to first class cricket pretty soon and maybe, from there, onto the international level. This kind of tour gives them a feel of touring, playing in different conditions, against different kinds of players. And tours like this, to lands different in culture from your own, are also part of their growth as human beings -- this kind of exposure helps their all round growth, not just as cricketers but as men.

I guess what I am trying to say is, the training programme at the Academy develops athletes. Tours like this are an extension of that -- and at the end of the month, hopefully, we would have taken a further step towards the goal of turning these boys into thinking athletes, excellent human beings.

Dennis Lillee told me the other day that Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad are likely to visit the Academy shortly for further training. Is this a new development, or has the ACA always been open to all?

Actually, the academy opened itself up to outsiders last year... at the beginning of the 1996 season. Having said which, even earlier the Academy welcomed people from other countries who wanted to come there and learn -- but this was at first restricted only to coaches and such. Like, your own Shekhar (T A Shekhar, head of the MRF Pace Foundation in Madras) visits us every year, updates himself on the latest coaching techniques and fitness programmes. And last year, we also opened ourselves up to overseas players.

Why? Well, we in Australia take cricket seriously. It is for us an enjoyable game, but it is more, it is also a way of life -- and we believe that anything we can do to help the game evolve, to get better, is our duty. I guess what I am saying is, Australia feels a responsibility for world cricket -- and we take that responsibility seriously.

As a coach, you probably observe cricket in other countries as well, right? So what's your take on the strengths and weaknesses of Indian cricket?

I don't think I should be sounding off about this one, really -- it is easy to stand outside and come up with quickfix analysis, comments, suggestions. On the whole, though, two thoughts come to mind -- one, India is lucky that it reguarly produces talented blokes. I mean, one lot, the Gavaskars and Vengsarkars and Amarnaths and Kapils go, and another lot, the Tendulkars and Dravids and Srinaths crop up.

Having said which, I don't think your team will produce consistent results with the kind of back-up they have now -- you don't have a fitness trainer, for one thing, and it shows in the way your boys do in the field. They are all gee-ed up in the first ten overs, but by the time you get into the say last 20 overs, their feet aren't moving, their shoulders are slumped, they look tired, worn out... it all speaks of low fitness levels, and in today's environment, natural ability alone will get you nowhere, you have to be mentally and physically at peak fitness levels.

I'd say your boys are superb players, but lousy athletes. And the other thing is -- I must repeat, I am not exactly sure of what your structure is here, so this is based perhaps on hearsay and what little I have observed -- India has a huge pool of experience, you got guys like Bishen Bedi who, a few days back, was here and was of enormous help for our boys, you got Prasanna, Kapil, Sunny (Gavaskar), so many other brilliant players of the past. And as far as I can see, you don't use their ability and experience to benefit the younger lot at all -- and that, I think, is a criminal waste.