Marsh's mantra: work, play and do the ironing

Academy boys are learning more than cricket

The golden future of English cricket was being put through its paces in Park 25 off the Adelaide ring road. Occasionally, the man who has been charged with transforming these chosen few into world-beaters, or at least Ashes winners, or even Ashes contenders, barked an order. Mostly, though, Rodney Marsh just watched with- out moving his eyes from the action.

All reports say that this year's intake of students at the English National Academy – it will move to Loughborough, England from Adelaide, Australia next year – have been diligent to a fault. They have worked hard and they have worked often.

Marsh, in his innumerable interviews, has been quick to point out how they would be prepared to walk over hot coals to play for England. Indeed, the fast bowler Jimmy Anderson and the off-spinner Gareth Batty were plucked from the Academy to play for England in the VB one-day series before Christmas. Ander-son has stayed with the senior squad. The Academy, perhaps, was not meant to work so quickly.

The inference has been that too many of the inaugural bunch were unprepared to do many of the hard yards. This year's crop do not know what soft yards are. It is a mixed bag of young cricketers. There is a difference between 19-year-olds and 24-year-olds, between Chris Read and Kyle Hogg, for example.

They need different things, they approach life in different ways. But the Academy could be the making of them both, to name but two. It is clearly already beginning to achieve what it was set up to do. It is turning out better men as well as better cricketers.

Read has already played for the full England team in both forms of the game. He was the big thing when he was first picked in 1999, but then it all went horribly wrong. After his tour of South Africa that winter he was quietly forgotten.

"I was England's next wicket-keeper but when I got back I had a pretty moderate season," he said. "Looking back now I didn't know what I had to do to play for England. I first started examining myself and my approach to the game in 2001. But the Academy has topped that off."

Read, a spectacular wicket-keeper who has learned consistency, can thank Marsh for his place on the Academy and a possibly big future. There was a sense that he had been quietly dropped from international plans. But Marsh saw something in him and spoke to him often.

"I met him last May and talked to him at first as a fellow wicket-keeper," Read said. "As the summer wore on he mentioned that I could get a lot out of the Academy. It has been massively important. I have been able to hone aspects of my game that I would not be able to at home."

Read has always been a likeable chap, always pretty sure of his ability too. But it is a different kind of assurance these days, the type exuded by a man who knows that he knows his own game.

"When I go out to bat now, I know what I have to do and how I can do it. My wicketkeeping has become more consistent, day-in, day-out. I feel ready for the bigger stage now, but I have not dwelt on it too much. I am happy in all aspects of my life."

For Read, already a senior player at Nottinghamshire, the Academy has been largely helpful for his cricket. He has changed his batting style (watch for some attacking strokes played with cocked wrists next summer). But he already cooks and cleans. "The missus wouldn't have it any other way." He did not dismiss the ancillary activities but it was easy to form the impression listening to him that if there had been an Academy when he was still a teenager it would have turned out differently much more quickly. "But I think it is essential that it is not just a place for young lads out of the Under-19s."

Hogg is gaining all the benefits. He was already some cricketer, a giant of a teenager from Oldham with bounce and a heavy bat, an all-rounder in the making. He likes to keep the game simple and probably has the same attitude to life.

"What I try to do is bowl outside the off stump and persuade the batsmen into making a mistake," he said. "With my batting I just try to keep still, watch the ball and then hit it. I don't like to complicate matters. But I am better now than when I came." He noticed too when he went home at Christmas that the Academy had worked its spell. "The way you deal with everyday things, tidying up, doing chores, that kind of thing.

"I'm quite a shy lad. I hate reading things out in public but we've been doing stuff on that. And then there's the training. When I've had a few weeks off before, I've just sort of relaxed. Now I pay more attention to keeping up my fitness because if I'm not doing it somebody else will, and he'll be after my place in the team. I wash and iron... well, my going-out shirts! My mum has done all that before."

The young fellows and the slightly older ones have tended not to mix that much socially, but that is the way with all teams. Anybody fearing that they are using the opportunity to be on the toot in Adelaide every night, an easy thing to do as some correspondents could tell you, can rest easy. "We're really too tired," said Hogg. "Sunday is the day we get off so we tend to live it up a bit on Saturday night. Other nights you just want to go to bed."

The Academy squad go on tour to Sri Lanka soon. Those slow, turning pitches and the high humidity will mean more early nights.