England and Wales Cricket Board
With the prized Ashes encounter slated in November inching closer, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) decided to sweat some arrogance out of the English cricketers. After leading at a clear advantage of 2-0 at the recent 5 match ODI series against Pakistan, Strauss and his boys let things go easy and conceded two matches in succession. To make things worse, Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) allegation of the 3rd ODI being fixed tarnished ECB’s image.
So the recently concluded five day Germany trip organized by team’s security officer, Reg Dickason took the English cricket team to Bavaria, South Germany. The following five day training trip was kept away from media glare and was a very hush affair, with only Andy Flower and his team management aware of the destination beforehand.
The players were strictly instructed to keep their mobile phones back home, after the recent tirade on twitter by Kevin Pieterson, Dmitri Mascarenhas, and Graeme Swann. In order to develop bonding amongst the team mates prior to the mother of all battles, the English cricket team participated in mental and physical tasks like Boxing, Hiking etc. in the later part of the camp, shifted to Nuremberg.
Andrew Strauss, the English skipper termed this five day camp as a tough but rewarding time for his boys. He termed this trip as an opportunity for the players to spend time away from the cricketing environment, and develop themselves both individually and collectively.
England’s training camp prior to the last Ashes didn’t go that well with minor glitches like – Flintoff missing the team bus and Bopara arriving without a passport, things that didn’t go down well with the team management. But this trip of Deutschland, has worked well for the English boys and now they can take a breather before leaving on October 29 for the upcoming Ashes, down under.
By: Soubhik Ray
Tags: Ashes Cup, Bavaria, Cricket, ECB, England, England and Wales Cricket Board, Germany, Reg Dickason
