REVIVAL_ENG_ACADEMY_18MAR1996

World Cup blow revives dream of cricket academy

BY JONATHAN PETRE, EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT

This report appeared in the last edition of The Sunday Telegraph

SENIOR cricket administrators have won their long battle to build a national cricket academy along the lines of the successful Australian centre which has produced world stars including the spin bowler Shane Warne.

The academy has until now been blocked by the counties, which have argued that a national centre of excellence was unnecessary because they provided adequate training.

But they have now been persuaded that a national academy is needed urgently in the wake of England`s dismal performance in the World Cup, according to sources in the Test and County Cricket Board, the game`s governing body. John Major, the Prime Minister, has exerted considerable pressure behind the scenes.

"It has become self-evident that we are at desperation stations," said one insider. "We can`t go on selling what is an increasingly shoddy product."

Senior officials at the TCCB, which will fund the academy, have met Ministers to discuss the injection of additional money from the lottery. The academy would employ the talents of former players like Dennis Lillee, the Australian fast bowler, to coach talented cricketers at all levels, from schoolboys to Test players.

The plan was welcomed yesterday by John Carlisle, MP for Luton West and vice-chairman of the Tory backbench sports committee.

"It could revolutionise the prospects of young cricketers," he said. "The academy could be like a cathedral choir school, offering an academic education as well as a cricketing one."

Jack Potter, the founding coach of the Australian cricket academy in Adelaide, who is now coaching at Sedbergh, an independent boys` boarding school in Cumbria, said: "There was a lot of animosity when we set up our academy in 1988.

"The states said their coaching was good enough. But what we found was that when the best kids came together, they really competed in every aspect of training, and that produced better, sharper players."

Plans to set up a national academy - with Mike Gatting, the former England captain, as chief coach - were shelved by the TCCB in January, even though sponors had been found, apparently because the counties could not agree on how it would operate.

But England`s latest debacle has revived it once again.

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