Marsh claims England lead the way with Academy

Rarely does Australian sport play catch-up with its English counterpart ,but this will be the case when the England and Wales Cricket Board and the English Institute of Sport complete the building of the National Cricket Academy at Loughborough University next year.

At least, this is the view of the former Australian wicketkeeper Rod Marsh, and he should know. Marsh, who is the director of the Academy, used to run the equivalent set-up in Australia and they have produced the odd cricketer or two.

Players of the quality of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist have come through the Australian system and now, with the most up-to-date facilities in the world, funded with £4m-worth of lottery money from Sport England, set to open in October 2003, the ECB will be hoping he manages to do the same with England's brightest young talent.

Speaking yesterday at Loughborough University while 13 of this year's intake of 15 – Ian Blackwell and Rikki Clarke only returned from Sri Lanka on Monday – went through their medical screening, Marsh said: "It is fantastic to have these facilities available, they will certainly make my job a lot easier. I am delighted because cricket has often been the poor relation, now it isn't.

"There is no comparison between the facilities we will have here and those in Australia. These will be far and away better than anything available there. In fact I looked on the Australian Cricket Board website the other day and it commented on what is happening here. Australia will now be aiming to follow what we will be doing."

At Loughborough there will be a state-of-the-art, 70 metre by 25, six lane Indoor Cricket Centre, which will allow a bowler to bowl off his full run and have a wicketkeeper standing back. The Hawkeye tracking system – used on television to monitor lbw appeals – will be installed as a coaching aid in all six lanes, as will a force plate to monitor the pressure exerted by a bowler in his delivery stride, the most common place where injuries occur. All the information collected can be viewed in a "performance analysis" suite.

Also on-site are two high-quality outdoor cricket pitches, a large fitness and conditioning centre and an 18-room residential facility.

Of the players in attendance yesterday, the experience in Adelaide this winter will be new to all bar one. The exception will be Alex Tudor, who many consider unfortunate not to be going to Australia this winter with the full squad. Talking about his second visit to the Academy, Tudor said: "Being left out hit me hard, but I am surrounded by good people and I still want to be England's number one bowler. Going back to Adelaide gives me an opportunity to do this."