Cricket Boot Camp: England’s Bonding Techniques
There seems to be a new way for sports teams to bond and train these days; boot camps. Over the last few years cricket teams have started to try and become stronger as a unit and win more matches as a result of it. Coaches and managers know that a team is only as good as its players, but if a team is made up of even average players but they play very well together, they can surprise the opposition and win games. For a team to bond is one of the best things that can happen; a lot of sports teams these days are divided and little groups of players get together and the team ends up not being unified. It is a captain’s dream to see his team play like a single unit and this looks all set to happen with boot camps taking place.
Boot camps have been used for many years as an exercise in bonding and team building. Companies use them to motivate and bring together their employees to make them more productive. Now it seems sports teams are using them as well. For athletes, boot camps have two benefits; firstly they build character, strength and help a team bond, and secondly a five day excursion to a boot camp is a great way for players to stay in shape before an upcoming tournament.
Cricket teams have been using boot camps since 2001 to help their players bond and also to keep up with fitness levels. The Australian cricket team made a gruelling trip to Gallipoli in 2001 and then again to Somme in 2005. They also had to endure a very brutal experience in the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Queensland-c834 Bush in 2006. England also had to face the same sort of thing but they started doing it last year with a trip to Flanders Field. This year, the whole English team made their way to the Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria where they had to endure a very rigorous and extremely tough five day boot camp.
There are both critics and supporters of the boot camp idea. On the one hand many people who support the idea, say it is a great way for a team to bond and experience an environment away from cricket in which they interact with their teammates. The captain of the English team, Andrew Strauss, said that the experience would, “help the players to develop themselves individually and collectively as a unit and as a team.” The benefits of the training will become evident when England take on http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 to defend the Ashes Series in a few weeks time. The Ashes is one of the most difficult cricketing series that takes place on the yearly schedule and both teams train extremely hard to try and defeat the other.
Then there are the ardent critics of the practice; not from a bonding experience but the fact that it might cause injuries for the players. Cricketers are very careful not to get injured during the off season because then they may miss the entire next season. A lot of players have been highly critical of the practice of boot camps because there is a high chance of someone getting injured. The gruelling nature of the training sessions, although fun, can ruin careers. Shane Warne is a strong critic of the team building exercise. He does not recommend it because as he says, “You have to be careful of injuries and the camp will be a real test for new players.”
It is speculated, that there is strong lobbying going on at the moment surrounding the use of boot camps. It seems that if one of the two teams is doing practice that may give them an edge the other team will do the exact same thing to balance the effect. Team management will push hard for boot camps in the future if they see some positive effect coming out of their use in the current series.
In the years to come, we will probably see an increase in the use of boot camps for cricket teams. Maybe other countries will start to use them too once the benefits are realised. In the future though, hopefully the boot camps will not take place in former concentration camps.
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