Cricket looking to get players into top shape

CRICKET PNG national team coach Joe Dawes has spent over a month now as full time coach of Papua New Guinea.
The former Queensland Bulls bowler firmly believes that a fit squad can be a competitive squad and one of the first items on the agenda when he started off in the job was to see just how fit his squad was and on returning from Zimbabwe, coach Dawes held time trials, where the Hebou PNG Barramundis ran a 2-kilometres stretch and recorded their times.
On seeing the results, Dawes along with fitness coach Billy Ame, who is working with consultant strength and conditioning coach Stephen Schwerdt, implemented a structured programme to improve the levels of fitness of the cricketers and the results have been fantastic.
Ame, who has been working closely with the players, played a big role in setting up the programme.
“After our initial testing, we broke the players down into running groups and trained them according to the focus areas of their development. We had a series of high speed running sessions over the whole week, cross country running, cross trainer work, boxing and on the bike. We did a lot of work depending on the area each player needed to improve in,” Ame said.
The improvements came thanks to some hard work from the backroom staff.
“We just put a structure into their programme — it’s a world class programme that has been put in place by the staff — Stephen has given a great structure and Billy is implementing it very well and for me as a coach, the most important aspect is that all the players have bought into it and the players have responded to it and they are enjoying the challenges,” Dawes said.
“Seeing both the results for the Barramundis and the PNG Lewas, I couldn’t be happier with the effort of the players.
“All players barring one who was unwell, smashed their previous best and over 90 per cent of the Barras achieved the targets set for them,” Dawes added. “These tests finished off the first month of our pre-season, we’ve seen the boys and the girls work really hard and are seeing them take great strides while putting in a lot of hard work in their physical development. Their fitness levels will transfer over to their skills and it is a great start to what both teams have happening in the near future.
“Many of the players are making comments that the new levels of fitness and strength is making their training and playing club cricket on the weekends easier.
“If you are quicker and can maintain it longer, you are going to be faster on the feet when you bat, you are not going to tire during the innings easily.
“Fast bowlers can accept an increase in speed because they are coming in quicker and the ability to maintain that pace throughout the day.”
“The results mean that the programs that we have put in place area actually working. It took us a lot of time to find the right program, to find the right methods to improve the players. At the start of it we were really nervous about what sort of results we are going to get.
“We wanted to pick up on endurance and ‘repeat efforts’ — for example to be able to run three runs back to back or have the same performance levels when walking out to the field and even playing on 100,” Dawes said.