WHEN the nights are growing longer and temperatures are plummeting, the place to seek some winter warmth may not be on a faraway beach but an unprepossessing modern white building on the campus of Loughborough University. There, at the ECB National Academy, England players will be able to prepare for their winter tours to Pakistan and India in sub-continental heat.

“It can be snowing outside and in here it can be 30-odd degrees and we’ll be walking around in shorts and T-shirts,” Troy Cooley, the England bowling coach, said. “The heat does run the power cell down quite a bit, but it’s all in a good cause.”

This is only one example of the technology used by the England management, which has meant that, although Michael Vaughan’s team cannot yet call themselves the best in the world, they are certainly the best-prepared.

That is the aim before they leave for Pakistan on October 26. “It’s a great place to prepare for a tour here, the best facility in the world,” Cooley said. “We have researched the (playing) surfaces so that we’ve got spinning pitches, quick pitches and normal pitches. The equipment’s all here. It’s up to the players to embrace that and move forward.”

Yesterday, Cooley was showcasing another use for high technology: the biomechanical profiling of fast bowlers selected for this winter’s National Academy. This involved the bowlers going through their paces wearing only shorts and trainers, covered in electrodes. They were surrounded by cameras, which fed back images of their bowling into the laptops of a team of biomechanists. Within minutes, a threedimensional image was available of the player’s skeleton performing its bowling action.

Using these images, Cooley and his biomechanical experts can analyse each bowler’s action to look for improvements and injury prevention. Over the past two years, they have mapped about 70 bowlers from the England Under-15 team through to the senior squad, a process that has helped Cooley to fine-tune the actions of the country’s leading fast bowlers so that England have a pace attack that is the envy of the rest of the world.

“We’re trying to find answers here to see what gives different types of bowlers their X- factor,” Cooley said. “It’s an ongoing process and we can’t see much at the moment, but in two or three years’ time we’ll start to see some results. Other countries are doing this, but we have got the best equipment in the world that’s starting to leapfrog other countries.”

Cooley’s job is to develop a squad of about eight quick bowlers that includes the Test team and reserves capable of stepping in. When Simon Jones was injured for the fifth Test against Australia at the Oval, there were concerns that replacements of requisite quality were not available and James Anderson, who was called up to the squad, was omitted in favour of Paul Collingwood, an extra batsman. “The injury rate for a fast bowler is about 17 per cent so, at any time, that’s the likelihood of him being out through injury, so the back-up needs to be there,” Cooley said.

Jones will have a scan on his injured ankle on Friday and, if the results allow, will begin to bowl again next week. If Jones is unable to tour Pakistan, Cooley believes that Anderson will be ready to step into his shoes. “He has done everything that Duncan Fletcher and England have asked,” Cooley said. “If Simon doesn’t make it, he’ll be ready for the challenge.”

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