Australia take to Hills' approach

At any Australia net session, a voice will be heard at regular intervals, issuing gruff instructions.

"Two minutes batters."

This sergeant-majorly tone does not emanate from the head coach Darren Lehmann, or his assistants Craig McDermott and Michael Di Venuto. Instead it is the preserve of the Australia team's analyst Dene Hills, who took up the task of running the training schedule soon after he returned to the support staff in December 2010. Hills had worked with England for the previous two years, and saw the need for someone to keep net sessions on course.

"A lot of the coaching and support staff were busy doing their stuff and I found myself standing there a little bit," Hills told ESPNcricinfo. "I like that role, keep everyone organised and everything to a clock. We don't want to be going too late with things because it can tire blokes out. We make sure our training's pretty efficient and flexible also. But someone's got to make sure everything's going to the clock, otherwise we'd be there all day."

Hills noticed a few other things when he came into the team five years ago, being as it was in the midst of an Ashes hiding at the hands of his former employers. The most important related to his much less visible but far more pivotal role as the man to provide statistical and video support to the coaches, captain and players: while England had an entire department of performance analysts at Loughborough University, Hills discovered that, as far as Cricket Australia's analysis division was concerned, he was it.

His predecessor, Michael Marshall, spent most of his time trying to log video footage and whatever hours were left trying to analyse its value. The team did not have footage of any games other than those they played in, so if they were facing a new opponent, they did so flying blind. If the 3-1 series margin between England and Australia that summer had an off-field equivalent, the field of data mining for plans and tactics was that very chasm.

"What I was impressed with compared to Australian cricket at that time, was they had a whole dedicated performance analysis department," Hills said. "They had a bloke in charge based at Loughborough, and because it was on a university campus they were basically cataloguing every game on the planet. They were also doing a lot of background work at Loughborough and then sending it through [to the team].

"Australian cricket at that time, it was pretty much Michael who had to do a lot of manual labouring to generate the stuff you needed to show to the team. In England, a lot of the background work was done away from the team and then an analyst with the team used it. So it was a lot different, they were more resourced than the Australian team was at the time. When I started I was doing a lot of the manual labour stuff, we didn't have every game on the planet, only who we played. So we were a bit behind the times in regard to that.

"They seemed to always have the tools to do the job. They were open-minded to technology and had a lot of good people around. They didn't seem to spare a cent - you weren't fussy about how many cricket balls you used, or if you needed to send players overseas you were able to do it. Even when I was in the batting role there they said 'we've got a budget here, what would you like to do'. So it was very open like that, there were a lot of opportunities to do and try things."

Five years on, and Hills oversees a far more sophisticated operation. Staff at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane assist him in collating data and footage, while the Indian consulting company Cricket 21 provides codified and searchable video of "every game on the planet". The Queensland-based sports analysis experts Fair Play Ltd tweak and upgrade Cricket Australia's software to their desired specifications.

The driver of this evolution was, funnily enough, the Ashes defeat and the Argus review that it spawned. The creation of a new team performance arm at CA had the former rugby executive Pat Howard at its apex, and his budgets were far more generous than anything seen previously. Suddenly, Hills had far more data at his fingertips.

"That was a catalyst for it, Pat Howard was a product of that and he had his mandate," Hills said. "Pat coming along has been very good for my part in this whole production, and we've got good support back at the National Cricket Centre who can do stuff for us if we really need to. As soon as Pat came on, he was open to new ideas and now we've got a lot of tools available through CA's desire to be where we need to be.

"Through India we now get all the games played in the world, so anything I show the team is the latest stuff. Players have got access online at any time to view whatever they want to view, very specific to their role. So if you're a left-handed batsman you can go in and watch 'bowler x' bowl to a lot of left-handed batsmen.

"Because so much cricket is beamed into India, we get it from there and that's another tool in the shed I've got. We use Hawk-Eye, we used Virtual Eye here in Australia, our own stuff, Fair Play Ltd have been fantastic in regards to modernising their software to our needs and state cricket's needs to grab stuff that we need. We didn't have a lot of that way back in 2010. We had different things, but it's been moving forward ever since."

At the World Cup, Hills is finding his role to be a little more elevated than it has been in recent weeks and months. Having played a plethora of cricket against the likes of England, India and South Africa in recent times, his video presentations have come to feel a little redundant given how much knowledge has been gleaned from recent meetings between the teams.

But in the case of Bangladesh and New Zealand there is far less. Having not played Bangladesh since April 2011, and not faced New Zealand in a series since February 2010, the players and coaches will be leaning heavily upon Hills' research, of both the opposition to come and the statistical trends of winning teams at ICC events.

"One of the most important things is still the knowledge in the room," he said. "I always thought one of my roles, and I told the players right from the start, is that I'm here to generate some conversation, to debate plans and find a way forward. Now, as we've played England a lot, we've used a lot more of that knowledge in the room than we have maybe some of the footage or stats that I've got.

"As we come into Bangladesh and New Zealand, who we haven't touched based with recently, it will come back on me a little bit, particularly some of the newer players New Zealand and Bangladesh have got, and I'll put some things together and say 'this is what I reckon'. Then someone else will say 'hang on, he's played in the BBL or IPL against me, this is what I reckon', and we go from there.

"I'm not there to dictate a lot, but what I'm trying to do is generate some good conversation with statistics, tools, whatever we think. And conversation with the coach and the captain on how we want to do it. For Bangladesh and New Zealand we need to have a look at the players. We'll go in depth with them - it's been a little while, and they're a different beast now, playing with confidence and performing well."

Confidence and performance are of course two words currently being thrown around a lot in relation to Australia. Apart from the sideshow of Michael Clarke's fight to make a tight fitness deadline after hamstring surgery, the ODI team is presently functioning to a very high standard. Hills believes the right balance has been found between plans based on laptops and more instinctive gambits, while the minds of the players are left uncluttered.

"All credit to the players, but I think Darren has brought in a little bit of that too," Hills said. "He's asked the players to take the game on and keep it simple. I think they're great words and the players have enjoyed that with the coaching staff that they can go and play their style and their game. We have our key performance things we need to tick off, they're always in the background, and we make sure we are doing that.

"There's some outstanding talent there and I think Darren and the coaching staff have really harnessed that talent by allowing them to play their game and keep it pretty simple. Darren's very open. If someone's got a good idea, speak up. In that environment, meetings or even training, let's thrash it out for the betterment of the team.

"We don't want to bamboozle them with too much information, but I want to hear what they have to say, that's the most important thing. My role is to create that platform. I can tell them exactly how it's happening for this player or that, but the experience day in day out with them playing with or against them is very, very powerful next to going on what the video's saying."

Of course there is often tension between the ideas presented by the analyst and those arrived at in a more organic manner. Hills recalled the days before Australia's critical first Test against South Africa at Centurion last year, when an underprepared pitch seemed ripe for bowling first until match morning. Statistics said bowl, for South Africa had built up a Gabba-like record by doing so. But a hot sun, a drying pitch and some hint of uneven bounce later in the game brought Clarke and Lehmann to a rather different conclusion. Hills, too.

"When we won that first Test against South Africa at Centurion, we knew that the stats were saying you've got to bowl first at that ground," he said. "But we looked at the wicket and it looked like a bat first wicket. At the conclusion of that Test Graeme Smith said 'the stats said we should bowl first' but we looked at that wicket and said 'no we're going to bat first'. In the end they put us in. That's probably the best example of the stats saying this, but there's always exceptions to the rule.

"It was a beautiful day, let's just grind it out to start with and blokes stood up. The stats were definitely saying we should bowl, and that ground was an absolute fortress for South Africa, like their Gabba. I don't blame them for bowling because that's exactly how they were winning the games. Two days before that we were saying 'they haven't even started preparing the wicket, this is going to be an absolute nightmare to bat on'. But we looked on the day and thought 'let's back ourselves'."

There has been talk of other countries, most notably England, allowing data analysis to overrule instinct. Hills is content that for the moment his team have found a middle path. The Australian character and its predilection for robust debate has also helped. "It probably happens every meeting," he chuckled when asked about what debates take place. "I'll say 'we should do this' and they'll say 'no he's better at that'. But that's what I'm after."