Test Match Special - Project Ashes Ep 3: The Backroom

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

For the last 12 months, Jonathan Agnew has been given exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the England men’s cricket team’s planning to win back the Ashes. Throughout the year, Aggers has spoken to key players, including Joe Root, Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson, but also those lesser-known names who play crucial roles. In Episode Three, we meet the backroom staff – the Performance Director who has to work out how many cricket balls the team will need throughout the tour, the nutritionist who hides Frosties at the breakfast buffet, and then the Strength and Conditioning coach who puts players through their paces on the first day of the summer.

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And he's Alderman, England have won. Here's broad, coming in and bowling to Vodges. Oh, he's brilliantly caught. Brilliant the corne. That is an outrageous catch by Ben Scopes. Good sweep, but he's going to be caught, and England have won the Ashes. England have only won once in Australia in the last 34 years. Eight series, one victory.

Dawson comes up and bowls to war. who drives and drives through the offside for his hundred. That is extraordinary. Ponting pulls that away to square leg. He's going to be caught. He's dropped it. Giles at Square Leg has stopped Ricky Ponting. This will be my ninth Ashes tour for the BBC,

but I've never really found out just what goes on behind the scenes to prepare a team for the ultimate test and how much planning and preparation it takes. So over the last year, I've been speaking to the people who are in charge of England's attempts. to win down under, those who'll play a big part on the pitch. We need to make sure that work goes in a couple of years ahead of being out in Australia. It's loud and it's a high percentage of Australians there

and they let you know that they don't like you. We're very well as players that we stand a better chance of winning in Australia if our families are allowed to come for a certain period of time without quarantining. And off the pitch. I've pretty much got responsibility for making sure that the players are the fittest players in the world essentially. It did take quite a while for Jimmy Anderson to get. any sort of trust in me as a physio I must have.

This is Project Ashes. So far in this series, we've heard from some of the players and coaches who will be instrumental in England's Ashes campaign. They're names and faces that are recognisable across cricket. But behind the scenes, there's another team, largely unknown and unrecognised, whose job it is to make sure the players have their best chance of winning in Australia. There are enough backroom staff helping the England team this tour to have a full cricket match between them. 22 in total, ranging from coaches to physios, security managers, to COVID compliance officers and of course family liaison managers too.

Throw in the team working with the England Lions squad and they've got another 11 staff. But who are these people? And what roles do they play helping the team? Is that working? I think it is. That's working. Okay. I need to go into there.

Got it. Right. Okay. Right, Mo, I think this starts off by this. It's early November. Joe Root, Jimmy Anderson and their teammates are packing their bags, ready to fly to Australia the next day. Also on the plane is the performance director Mo Bobat. We've already heard from him in the first two episodes. He works with the head coach, Chris Silverwood, on long-term planning for series. So the day before he flies, what sort of things are on his to-do list for the day? We're in constant dialogue with cricket Australia around details such as our training plans and requirements for the period when we get out of our hard quarantine and into soft quarantine, you know, literally details like what nets we've got, middle wicket capabilities, access to net bowlers at a certain period. All of that detail is still stuff that we're working through because much of that has had quite a truncated timeline due to the other biggest stuff we've been working on, which is just simply getting in the country. But we're also working on, you know, our medical department will be working on some of the medical operational detail in and around in and around our travel for us getting out there. You know, I've got an email today myself and the operations manager saying because typically when you tour, you take out some of your own balls and the opposition give you some too. And just the email this morning saying, where do you want your balls delivered? You know, all of that stuff is just literally coming through and you're constantly on and you never off really.

So it's non-stop really right up to us getting on the plane. I can say deep down and completely truthfully that everything I do is for England cricket and I absolutely love seeing England winning and that includes against Australia in and Ashes and I'll remember when I first... This is Ben Langley his job title is medical services lead for men's pathway

you'll notice an Aussie twang in his voice so much like anyone from England who works in Australian cricket he often finds he's asked about his nationality It's something. I don't know being part of an outfit like this, you know, despite what people think are going to be ingrained things that you can never shrug off. But, you know, it feels like a speech is how to deliver a thousand times. It did take quite a while for Jimmy Anderson to get any sort of trust in me as a physio. I must have been a good year or two before I think he trusted me fully.

Langley works alongside Rob Amman. He's the national lead for strength and conditioning, which means his job is having a really sharp focus on the England men. making sure that the kind of 26 contracted players are the fittest players in the world, essentially. So if it's anything to do with the fitness or physical well-being of England's players, then it's down to these two. I'll caught up with them ahead of England's busy summer, but as always, the ashes are on their minds. We've been talking about some in general principles. We've been thinking about this probably as the India test series was going on during the winter,

and we've only started to formalise meetings over the last few weeks, really, to start making sure that we've got specific tasks to work on. If I'm honest, I think we've compared to what we were doing leading into the 2019 World Cup and Ashes, we've already ticked off a lot of the boxes already because we've moved our practice on quite a bit since even two years ago. So in 2019, we're probably making sure that people arrived injury-free and in reasonable condition,

and we're at the point now where we're trying to make sure both physically and mentally they're arriving to peak. not just in a half different place, but in an excellent place. And Rob, are you expecting the players to be at a 100% fitness strength all of the time? Or is it ebb and flow a bit? Are there peaks and times off and so on? Or is this now a relentless march straight through to the end of the ashes in January? There's definitely peaks and troughs with the fitness. But we have been building towards the end of, towards the ashes and the end of the ashes for a number of years.

now. You know, the squad fitness as a whole has been building over the last four or five years and we're now in a much, much better place than what we ever, than what we ever have been, to be honest. If you want to put it into terms of an analogy, we've built a really good engine. The lads now are much more aerobly fit than they ever have been. They're leaner than what they ever have been. And now we're just trying to put the icing on the cake really and actually make sure that when we get off the plane in Australia, that the lads are kind of leaner, faster, are more horribly fit than ever before. So, yes, there's definitely down periods

where the lads have to have a break. There's no two ways about it. You can't keep going and pushing up towards the moon. It's unfeasible, really. But, you know, once we schedule in a break, then the lads will definitely get back into the training. But at the minute everyone is kind of firmly focused on the back end of this year.

Does it vary from player to player? I mean, no one's the same, are there, in terms of Ben Stokes and the way he trains, for instance. So, I mean, I wouldn't expect necessarily, I don't know, Jack Leach runs around a bit, but I mean, I'm just throwing some names in there. I mean, you're having to juggle, aren't you? Yeah, you have to massively juggle.

And all the training is, you know, 100% individualised. We put the players through some physical profiling, which is one of the things we'll do this weekend. And that information we get from the physical profiling helps us to determine which way we take their training. So do they need more aerobic work? Do they need more speed work? To need more focus more on the gym?

And it's the combination. of all the data that we get and just pulling it all together then helps us tie in then where their game demands as well as to, right, this is what we need to be doing for you training-wise to get the most out of you on the pitch. So it's a big process. Rob, I imagine it's not too difficult to incentivise people to do some hard work, is it?

No, it's not when you've got the prizes of a T20 World Cup and on ashes. And to be fair, that the whole culture of the team has changed a lot with regards to the kind of physical work. A while ago was definitely tired with, you know, they're not always the best athletes, but, you know, you can completely disagree. And when you look at some of the information that we get from them, you can see that, you know, we've actually got some really good athletes here.

And sometimes it's actually a matter of holding the lads back a little bit. Gone of the days of being the kind of sergeant major approach, which obviously kind of, I fit quite well. But it's now, I've now moved to a point where it's just about facilitating training and just having discussions around what good training weeks look like and everything else that goes with that. So it's just a matter of helping them shape and direct what optimal prep looks like rather than actually kind of have to force them into it with a big stick. Where does that come from? And is that come from the top? Does it come from the captain? I mean, Ben Stokes,

obviously, Vice Captain, we talked about his training and so on. But I mean, is it important that there is that really sort of positive feel from from the top level of the team that feeds down, do you think? Yeah, definitely that top level approach always works. And then when you've got someone like Stokes, Butler, who are kind of so much into their fitness. And even Rootie, I mean, people don't always give Rootie the credit he deserves for being a fit guy. I mean, he's incredibly fit and he does all his work behind the scenes, kind of out of the way. But when you've got those three at the top, kind of putting in the work that they do, it's pretty easy for everyone else to kind of follow suit, to be honest. Those players, Root, Stokes and Butler

will probably play all five tests in Australia. But what happens when players aren't selected? That's another role that falls to Mo Bobat. I think cricket and we, we need to destigmatise getting left out of a cricket team. Correct. Even the fact that we call it getting dropped, other sports don't use that language anymore. Like football rarely talks about dropped. It's left out or rotated. And it's quite a strong word that because dropped feels quite binary.

You're in your app. I'd say the first thing, Aga, is to destigmatise that term. I think it's unrealistic to, in this day and age, with the amount of cricket we play with COVID and multi-formats, you know, and conditions and actually matching up to what it takes to win in different parts of the world, I don't think you're going to reel out the same 11 every game anyway. So I think destigmatising getting dropped is important. And that will have a really positive impact on how the player's view being left out, I think, in time. So we're working on that. That said, obviously, when a player gets left out, whatever you call it, it's a difficult

time for them. And I think, you know, it's incumbent on us. And certainly part of my role is trying to help them return back to England. And that is exactly part of my role, so that Chris has another person to pick from that's really enabled to perform at that level. So part of that is being really honest about the reasons why they might have been left down. Part of that is really empathising with their perspective

and talking to them about what that feels like for them. And then in some cases, leaving them to their own guises, so they go back to their counties and work on things, if that's the right solution. But in other cases, it's wrapping support around them and helping them to return and helping them bounce back. And, you know, there'll be players on this lion's trip that have featured for England in the past. And it's my job to try and help get them ready for international cricket again so that they're an option that Chris can pick from, really.

So, yeah, it's a complex answer and you've got to handle it really carefully. We're trying to, we're trying our best to help them bounce back. And I think we're trying to avoid a scenario where people get left out of an England team and they just disappear. Because if that's the case, we've made the wrong investment in the first place. And, you know, we shouldn't be doing that. I don't think. With all the information available to us, we shouldn't be making too many. really, really wrong investment, I would have thought.

I spoke to Ben and Rob, the fitness team, at a crucial time back in the spring. England had just come back from India, the players had had some rest, and the following day they were due to put them through their paces for the first fitness tests of the summer. So what sort of thing exactly will they get them to do? It's set up very much as a, I think fitness testing was always viewed as a kind of almost a bit of a punishment day. It was the start of pre-season, you do your fitness test, and everybody dreaded it, and people would be calling up the night before.

saying I've hurt my hamstring or my dog ate my trainers and they put out all the excuses they could do to not do it. But we've shifted that focus quite a bit now to working out, as I said earlier, just about what kind of state is the player in and how can we use this information to help shape their training direction. And for me, that's hugely important. So we'll look at kind of four main areas. We'll look at body composition. So we'll take skin folds from a number of sites on the body, which gives us an idea of kind of levels of body fat. and we've got some targets that we want the players to hit. Players will do an aerobic test,

which is we used to do the yo-yo test or the beep test. We now do a 2K time trial, which is over in about anywhere between 7 and 8 minutes. And the reason for the shift, it just gives us some, it just gives us better information that we can use with the players, to be honest. We don't always have to lay cones out

and we can basically do a 2K time trial anywhere in the world, to be honest. Obviously, running in between the wickets is massively important for batter, So we just need to make sure that we're testing how quick they can actually run in between a wickets. Because from a strength perspective, there's a lot of different things that I can do as a strength coach to help improve running in between the wickets. Because sometimes even if you just improve somebody's time by, say, 0.1 of a second, which isn't much, that gives you a 60 or 70 centimetre speed improvement,

which, as we know in a kind of game of cricket where the line is only a couple of inches wide, that's clearly the difference between being in and out. So the players will be working from about 9 until about 12, 30 tomorrow morning and they'll just kind of rotate through those different stations. When I was playing a million years ago, there was sort of an expression that meant if your cricket fit, you know, that you, you know, we didn't do nearly so much training as happens these days. But does that sort exist?

I mean, do you find that players actually are better for having bold overs and spent days in the field? Yeah, 100%. And that's kind of, especially from a rehab perspective, I think people used to get caught in a trap from a rehab perspective of once they'd completed all their gym and they're running and they said they were fit kind of going into and playing a first-class game and they would tend to break down.

But we've totally altered our processes now where people come back and we'll actually use county cricket to make sure the players are not just ready to play, but actually ready to perform. And that's the kind of difference. And that kind of links back to that being cricket fit. The game's really tough and really demanding. and we need to make sure the players have got enough cricket under the belt to perform at the highest level.

Obviously, the people we focus on a lot of the fast bowlers because unfortunately for them, they often carry the burden of injury with that. But if you look down the list of bowlers that we've got, they come in all shapes and sizes and ages and whatnot. So as Rob alluded to, no two player has the same program and we've all got very bespoke focus depending on where they are. some do unfortunately we might be fighting off some of the injury niggles that they might have been carrying

and fortunately for us at the moment we're starting to get people out of some of those places where they're less focused on injury more about getting themselves into a really good place but a large part of that is we do look at their bowling history and what they've been able to achieve in their first class career to date so have they been able to string a lot of games together have they've been able to bowl big days in the dirt. And that helps, I suppose, give us confidence in returning a player to Chris Silverwood to say that they're ready to go and they're fit to go, is that they've got that bowling load under their belt.

They're not geriatrics, but in Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, you've got two advanced fast bowlers, should we say, in terms of years. How particularly careful are you being with them? And I guess clearly the rest and rotation bit particularly applies to them. It does with the others too, but how are you going to get them through this summer to make sure that they're good to go in December? We would say that both Jimmy and Stuart are in the best place physically that we've ever seen them. Definitely the training that they're putting in is as good as it's ever been in their careers.

For me, I've seen 10 years of their career. They're definitely doing all the right things that they could possibly do. And if anything, now that they're test specialists and Red Bull specialists, We want to make sure they play ideally every game because part of keeping them at their best is making sure that they hit the peak of their physical challenging by playing at the top level every time. So that's why we've tried to get as much championship cricket

into them prior to this New Zealand test series to make sure they're well prepared that they've got a base of bowling to then take the step up and hopefully play two test matches. Once a player's fully fit, we haven't had much to do with whether they're being, selected or not. So what our responsibility has been is to try and get them fit obviously and available as often as possible. Probably one of the bigger changes has been

and Jimmy Anderson would be a good example of that is that we've tried to give him more time to be ready for that return test. So an example would be in Sri Lanka where we really wanted to hit the ground running is we've probably pushed back when Jimmy thought he was available by an extra few weeks but he's very open to what we have to say because he knows we've got his best interest at heart we do want him to to get back and play and then stay fit again and you know the couple of injury issues that he's had over the last couple years he's done so much work to get on top of those and I'm not saying it was the catalyst as to why he's in that amazing amazing place he's in today but it's definitely a contributing factor because

he knew he had to do extra work to get on top of the injury issues that he's had. Rob, how do you view Jimmy Anderson physically? He is a fantastic athlete, to be honest. To have bowled a number of overs, he's bold, just shows the level of resilience. But what is interesting is he's probably at the fittest point of his career. When you look back through his historical fitness test and data, he's fitter now than what he ever has been. So not just from a speed and endurance perspective,

but also from a body composition perspective. He's leaner than he ever has been and pays real close attention to what he eats, when he eats, and he ties that in with his training and days on and days off. Jimmy is probably the most professional guy we've got on the squad. He just pulls everything together. It's fantastic to see, to be honest,

somebody of that age and stature within the game to have that approach to look after himself to try and remain the greatest bowler that England's ever had, really. that line about Jimmy paying more attention to what he eats got me thinking I'm finding out how much work goes into preparing players to stay fit and avoid injury but what about what they actually eat so I met up with Emma Gardner England's nutritionist she's experienced in high-level sport

and when I met her she'd also come back from Tokyo where she was working with team GB and she too was full of praise for Jimmy's diet he's in fantastic condition and to be fair we're seeing him constantly improve and that's really refreshing for somebody of his age that he feels physically and myself and Phil see all the time that he's getting better and better but what's nice is he pays a lot of attention to those areas so from our side obviously it's delightful to see

that he's actually still running in hard bowling as many overs as he is and taking wickets and hopefully he values and I know he does he values the nutrition and the physical side to get him there in simple terms though what does a nutritionist actually do What does a nutritionist do? I think it completely varies between who you're working with. But in cricket, my main job is to ensure that the guys eat correctly,

to fuel, recover, to be optimally prepared for cricket, as simple as that. A lot of my work with these guys involves understanding cuisine when we travel as well, because that's very different to a lot of sports. We spend huge amounts of time away where obviously you then have to get used to eating quite a different diet. So I do a lot around that And I also work closely to help them stay healthy That's another big one And is cricket any different to any other sports

I mean it's all day out there isn't it And then perhaps you have to do it again tomorrow I mean is that sort of thing come into it? Absolutely I got the biggest shock of my life When I started working in cricket It's so so so different to other sports I've ever worked in I think one the different formats

makes it nutritionally challenging Because it varies between formats You can prepare a guy to go and back for hopefully five hours and he could be out within two minutes which makes it very very difficult to maintain them as simply as that and then obviously you have a huge amount of variety in terms of their role as to what they do so a fast bowl whose nutrition would be extremely different to a spinner would be very different to an opium batter would be very different to one all around it so it's it's complex and it's not factual in the sense of you kind of have to hypothesize situations

and then extrapolate information based on what you know from other sports or previous experiences. So it makes it very, very difficult. But also I like the variety of that. The guys now would eat a huge bowl of porridge with a banana, some eggs on toast, with some beans. They then come in, and if it's one of our fast bowlers, we'll give them a smoothie before they go out to bowl. They'll then have a lunch. We'll then feed them again at tea. Depending on what they're doing in the match, then they'll eat straight after the game,

then they'll eat again later on. So the quantity, I think, is definitely something that I've worked on with these guys because when I first started working with them, I was surprised at how little I thought they ate for their output. So I think, depend on who it is, of course, but particularly our fast bowlers, I think they get sick of me telling them to eat more, which personally I'd be happy with that. To maintain their physical body composition, if you will, which is also important across a test match, will get them periodising what they eat.

So it will vary drastically, well, not drastically, but it will vary, depending on if they're bowling or if they're, you know, hopefully we're batting for long periods of time and Jimmy's not having to do anything. He's just sat inside. But I suppose the difficulty with the test match is you're always preparing for something else, whether it's the second innings or often you're preparing for the next test match, which is only a few days later. So they still will have quite a high intake throughout. It will just depend on what the nature of the meal composition would be. How do you know if you've been successful? I mean, you see he's on a sports field, can't you? But how do you know when you're

you've done your job well? In all honesty, if the player reports that they felt good, that's generally what I go off. And I'm sure there'd be other nutritionists who will cringe at that because everybody likes science and objective data to show, oh, look, their body fat or their skin folds are in a great place. So therefore, we're doing a good job nutritionally. But for me, I, you know, somebody, one of our fast bowlers, if they come off from five days and they feel physically like they're in a good spot, they had good energy levels, they're not too

saw then I can then extrapolate from that that we've got their nutrition well we've done their nutrition well and we've you know we've fueled and recovered well from the activity I think that's the best gauge you're ever going to have in something like a cricket match otherwise you know we could get into data but as I said before what does that really tell us there's a young lads are for all that most of them I do have any restrictions on them they're stuck in hotels you go through your apps you think oh I guess fancy a bit of this a little bit of that. I mean, how restrictive are you, or

are you not, in fact? Is it up to people who's a common sense? Yeah, I would like to hope that they would say I'm quite relaxed with them. It's all about education for me. I try and educate them on the best choices. But the reality is, we live out of hotels and they will eat

out a lot of the time. So, you know, generally we'll eat together as, our breakfast as a team will eat, obviously, on training days together as a team and I will set the menus for that with the grounds. But in an evening for example they're free to go out and you know obviously outside of COVID restrictions to go and enjoy a meal if we weren't living in COVID restrictions and therefore you know I have to hope that they will make a good choice but you know you'd be amazed that I generally put a lot of

delivery information out so they'll say if I'm going to eat at Wagamommer's one of the best options and I'll give them I'll give them information on that and I'll try and guide them towards the best choice whether it's the day before we're going to play a game or whether it's for recovery and likewise you know sometimes we will put buffets on in the hotel and get and you know we'd like to eat together as a team and then obviously I have a little bit more control but I think the reality is food is mood for me it can be challenging when we're living for weeks on end in hotels and and they want to look to food to enjoy it and therefore you know I'm quite relaxed about what they pick alcohol alcohols or you know it's funny isn't it cricket and

alcohol it's always it's always a topic that I'm quizzed on but let's just say at the of a test match, I want us to celebrate our wins. I think the main difference that we've made is, as you were saying earlier, you probably had a couple of pints mid-innings. I dread to think that we would do that now. I don't think we would ever do that. That, you know, if we're in the match, we're not drinking. But at the end of a game, absolutely. We celebrate. Celebrate your wins. And the guys will have a few beers and, you know, you'll find me in there as well. I'll love beer as well. Is there anything that is completely banned? anything that's completely banned

I don't think there is I mean the guys laugh at me that there's certain things that they'll see me just swiping out of the buffet in a morning so it might be like the frosty cereal I'll be first in and you know just a couple of days ago

actually I was moving that out and one of them laughed because they saw me doing it and they say why are we moving the frosties like we're not eating frosties before again but generally I'm pretty chilled out but yeah there'll be a few items that they do have a chuckle about when fizzy drinks are probably a big one

that we've tried to shift. When I first started, there's always be Pepsi's and fanters around the dressing rooms and, you know, they now go searching for them because they know I've hidden them somewhere. But no, that's probably the only one. I remember 2013, the ashes there, and I've got them written down because I remember some of the items on the menus that were put around. Remember this? England's catering demands included

Piri Piri Tofu I had to look it up With tomato salsa A quinoa and cranberry breakfast bar Mung bean curry with spinach And a ginger biscotti Sounds lovely But is that the same sort of thing

It's going to happen On this ashes to Emma or not Well to be fair I guess I joined in 2017 So there was a 52 page document Which I know was leaked at the time Yeah They had a lot of fun with it Yeah they did

all I'll say now is our catering guideline is three pages it's very minimal what we tend to do when we travel anywhere is my approach is I would rather the grounds and the chefs there give me their menu and then I know what they're capable of cooking and what they enjoy cooking and then we'll manipulate it to what the guys' needs are

but we won't be putting any 52-page documents to the Aussies this time now I can remember just how much of a field day the Australian press had that time mind you maybe this time they're having it at their own team's expense For everyone I've spoken to for this episode, it's not just about getting England's players ready for the Ashes. For five players in the Ashes squad, they've also had the small matter of the T20 World Cup before that.

So how does that change planning? Here's Mo Bobat again. We've acknowledged that there's no easy transition. If you win the T20 World Cup, your highs a kite, you probably want some downtime and you want to celebrate. You don't really want to pick up a bat and get into a Gabbat test match. Equally, if you lose in the final or the semi-final, you distraal. and if you get knocked out in the group stages, you're embarrassed. So there's no easy transition from a World Cup into an ashes,

and it's acknowledging that. And actually, give an example of how COVID has made that more challenging, one of our plans a couple of years ago was actually to create a bit of space for the players coming over and almost give them a bit of a holiday in Australia and take their families and read a few ideas around that. But we've not been able to do that the way we want to because of quarantine periods now and the restriction on travel. So we are putting a real heavy emphasis on families being able to travel.

players where that works for them and we're going to have to try and manage some sort of a decompression from the world cup before they then get into thinking about the ashes really yeah it's quite a long period of what are you going to be doing to think in those those first few days in particular when people do get together again in queensland how are you going to work that yeah so we've got we've got well we've got to serve 14 days of quarantine but the nature of that varies slightly so we've got about three days worth of what you would call hard quarantine where we're restricted to our hotel rooms and then we've got about 11 further days beyond that where we've got what we call soft quarantine which simply allows us to go to the

training ground and back and then we're allowed to move around our hotel but we can't leave the hotel but obviously at all times we've got to stick to pretty pretty strong protocols in terms of spacing and hygiene and all that sort of so you at least they can train the least they can get i mean things have moved a bit yes yeah so for the three days so you know you talk about planning in detail. For the three days where we're stuck in hotel rooms, we're trying to make sure that players have in-room physical training programs that they can chip away at. Our strength and conditioning coach will be liaising with them and trying to support them through that virtually. Real attention to detail on nutrition and the meals that people have during that period.

No doubt we'll be doing some individual check-ins with players. You know, I certainly will with all the Lions players. I know that Joe, for example, will probably be doing the same with the test lads, collective virtual briefings as well. So that when we get out of those three days, we come out of it with a little bit of energy, and then we can get straight into training, really. I'll try and share an example now that hopefully people can picture, but even this week, you know, with Chris being out of the T20 World Cup and having some of our coaches out there, myself being in the UK with some of our coaches here, you know, only this week we got on a virtual call with all of us on the call and Joe joining us as well. And we're talking through our

tactical approach for what we're going to do, coaches sharing insight and analysis, input from our performance analysts, and us agreeing what that means for how we're we're going to prepare. And it isn't just laboring over footage. You know, you come back to as most sports do. You're trying to work out what does it actually take to win. We've got all of our subjective wisdom, but we also want to look at some of the data as well and try and understand what it takes to win out there. So how do you approach this from a player fitness point of view? Here's Rob Amon. I think it's probably best to kind of look at it as one event all rolled into one. Regardless, it's going to be tough, whichever way you cut it up. But for me, I'm definitely

viewing it as one big event. because I think that's the only way to do it, to be honest. But it is a challenge. There's no two ways about it. But I think with the characters that we've got in those players and the knowledge and experience that myself and Ben have gained over the last couple of years have been involved with the World Cup and Ashes in 2019 and moving forward into this

and some of the key lessons we've learned and hopefully we'll have a different experience. One of the things I really do hope comes across is the exciting but challenging nature of dealing with these Twin Peaks and these two peaks because it's quite unique, and I think it's great. We should get excited by the fact that we've got to work up in an ashes. But that's probably, if I had to summarize, for someone in my role who does performance strategy, that's the bit that you get really excited about.

Like, how are we going to nail two things that come so concurrently that are so different across formats and different across conditions and how do we manage our playing and staffing resources so that we can do that as well as we can? I think that's a really exciting area and something that we've got really excited about trying to trying to do. I mean, it sounds if you take, obviously the injuries out of it,

Archer and Stone, but actually I mean, you can argue it's probably the best prepared England squad that's ever gone to Australia, isn't it? I mean, all this work going on behind the scenes

and this nice buildup that they've got. Yeah, I'd say, look, like you've described, the couple of the injuries make things difficult. They really do. You know, I think if you were planning

things in an ideal world, you want a bit more space between the World Cup and the ashes to give people the downtime and the recharge time and we mustn't underestimate how much energy that's going to take out of the guys out there at the minute. But yeah, I think we've certainly given the constraints

and cars that we were dealt. I think we couldn't have done much more. There's the other unknowns as well, like what is it going to feel like being out in Australia having done a quarantine period or what's it going to feel like without the Barmy Army there? All those sorts of things, different things that, you know, they're the sorts of what ifs that we need to talk about

and prepare for so that we don't get any surprises. and for someone in my role, you're trying to get the players to a place where they're not surprised and phased by too much because the challenge is hard enough without those surprises. Well, I'll say it's really fascinating to find out what goes on behind the scenes. I've never really known the extent of the work that goes on unseen, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for Emma at the hotel breakfast buffet swiping away the frosties. But what's life like for those players who spend so much of their lives on tour, deprived of their favourite breakfast cereals.

That fear of missing out. Sarah, of course, keeps me updated with pictures and videos every day, which of course is lovely, but then at the same time, I mean, it lasts for like a minute while you look at the video and you think, wow, that's awesome. And then you think, oh, I wish I was there. We're very well as players that we stand a better chance of winning in Australia if our families are allowed to come for a certain period of time without quarantining.

When you're married, you're in a partnership. You're sharing the responsibilities of your children and of your household. And when you're not there, it's all kind of dependent upon me because I'm the one that's up and after hang. That's next time on Project Ashes. exclusively on BBC Sounds. It's too late for me now, man, yeah, it's too late at this.

I thought I was going to get some more dates to match of the day then. Yes, myself, Alan, and the busiest man in football punditry, Micah Richards, return for series five. He was never going to Man City. Maniated could never, ever have allowed

Cristiano Ronaldo to have gone to Manchester City. The Match of the Day Top 10 podcast, only available on BBC Sounds.