Andrew Collomosse: England plug in to Schumacher`s mean machine (24 September 1997)

Wednesday 24 September 1997

England plug in to Schumacher`s mean machine

By Andrew Collomosse

ENGLAND`S elite cricketers were introduced yesterday to the fitness technology that helped to make Michael Schu- macher a double world champion in grand prix motor racing.

It remains to be seen whether the same equipment will put Michael Atherton and his men on pole position in the Caribbean this winter. But with those kind of credentials, you can`t blame them for trying.

As Wayne Morton, the England physiotherapist supervising a series of fitness assessments, said: "It would be nice to claim we use the machine that makes Michael Schumacher the fastest thing on four wheels and Darren Gough the fastest on two legs - not a hospital bed."

Around half of the men who will represent England on the full tour to the West Indies, the A tour to Kenya and Sri Lanka and in the one-day tournament in Sharjah reported for duty at the David Lloyd Centre in Leeds.

And, perhaps significantly, most of the more senior members of the winter squads will arrive for their iso-kinetics session on the Technogym REV 9,000 biomedical equipment today, presumably working on the theory that forewarned is forearmed.

Judging by the expression of Yorkshire`s young fast bowler Paul Hutchison as he was put through the mangle to assess the condition of his shoulders and knees, the machine is only a marginally less forbidding foe than a fired-up Curtly Ambrose.

Still, as Morton, not to mention coach David Lloyd, in- sisted from the comfort zone: it`s all in a good cause. Namely, to ensure that England`s cricketers are as mentally and physically prepared as they possibly can be when the flak starts to fly.

Morton has long been a devotee of a strict fitness regime that has, not to put too fine a point on it, been labelled a waste of time by the traditionalist lobby and he acknowledges that as long as the players under-achieve out in the middle, criticism of his methods is inevitable.

Yet he insists: "I`ve never tried to pretend that im- proved fitness alone will make a player a better cricketer; though it certainly won`t make him a worse one. But it`s not as though we`re working in isolation. All the other major Testplaying countries have similar programmes for their players.

"Physical fitness is only part of the jigsaw, and I`ve sometimes wondered if we would ever have all the pieces. But I reckon we`ve found all four corners and we`re moving in the right direction. In the end, it`s about mental toughness and one way of achieving that is through physical preparation."

Predictably, Lloyd, breaking off from a series of one- on-one sessions with his players, is less adapt with the fitness-speak, simply proclaiming: "We`re here to find out what they`re good at and where they need to improve - be it speed, flexibility, mobility, strength. We don`t want any excuses about fitness levels this winter.

"Every other cricket nation does this, with Australia and South Africa the market leaders, and we`re right up there with them. Some people think it`s a waste of time and they`re entitled to their opinion. But you can`t live in the past and if we walk away from this now, we`ll never achieve anything.

"This is a necessity not an option. Using the same fitness equipment as Michael Schumacher is plain common sense, nothing more or less."

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)