Nobody can afford to give up - David Dwyer

I worked in the University of New South Wales looking after their high performance sports section. Geoff Lawson was there through his affiliation with playing for the cricket club. He was also working at NSW cricket and the university's cricket club asked me to come do their fitness in the off-season. Then Geoff came along a couple of months ago. I had worked with the university's cricketers and one of their major students or players was Michael Slater, so I had some experience of working with cricketers at various levels.

There is a difference and there isn't. That doesn't sound so clear but it depends on the level of athlete you have, how much of a natural athlete a player is. Take the Australian cricket team. If you were to walk in with them, you wouldn't have to do the same thing as I have to do with Pakistan. The Australians continue to have this emphasis on fitness.

Pakistan also has had it, but having done the testing for them, there are a lot of areas where we could improve. All I'm doing is defining what movement and motions are required and used. You programme exercises specific to the individual and their roles.

I sort of leant towards Bob's sentiments only because I've come from another country and a sport. But the team has been hugely responsive. When we arrived we said there is no longer any excuse why we're not No. 1.

We have a white towel with 'No Excuses' written on it. The first person to give up, we put their name on it so they've thrown the towel in. It doesn't matter if it's someone who has played 200 Tests or less. We're all working towards the same goal and can't have any link willing to give up. They're very much willing to accept that.

We've got a long way to go but the best thing was at the end of the first day at Karachi when we were stretching down. One player came up and said, after 90 overs, he continued to run to the wicket, run to the stumps and while stretching felt the freshest he had felt. After a full day in that heat: that person is in a crouching position all the time and has to run to the stumps. He's on every ball.

We trained every day. There were travel days but the format, you only have three hours. Of that, if you're a fielder, 90 minutes is spent on the field and yes there might be intense periods. But we used to go to the gym straight after every day.

It's a big challenge, but the players are extremely open to it. They're young, up for it, open to new thoughts, ideas. Over five days we wanted each of them to do two weight sessions if you are in the playing XI and if there's a possibility then a third.

We've created a large squad of 16-17 guys, so the non-players are doing double sessions every day: fitness and strength or fitness and speed.

If it was up to me, and it will be, I am going to flog them. We have people at the academy and the idea that I wanted is that regional academy guys also assess them. The guys will report to me and as part of their testing we have set them targets. Players will come, do fitness testing and they've got to achieve those targets. Anyone who doesn't, it will affect them. Targets will be set between myself, the coach and the player so that they are reasonable, fair and something they are willing to work towards. Once in place, I'll keep feeding them programmes for the time they're away from international cricket.

A bit of both. It's hard for me to comment on what happened before but there are unique stresses placed on the body here, like baseball, with a lot of twisting and power through the spine. We're more advanced about knowledge of the body and the stresses placed on it. We've placed a huge amount of time on the recovery aspect. We've got some new sport leggings from Australia and this helps to try and repair the body, providing more oxygen to the muscles to help them repair. The guys are finding that so much better than anything they have had.

Diet is important too and you work around factors like Ramadan where players fast. But they are becoming stronger. We could maybe use a rotational system. In rugby the players' association has a policy where players are only allowed to play 30 games a year to avoid burn-out. If we can build the perfect squad we can choose, just like Australia, from ready back-ups. McGrath goes and Mitchell Johnson comes: think about the injuries they have had in the past. I can't remember many.