The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : New Australia coach sets pre-season camp

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Saturday, Jun 16, 2007
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New Australia coach sets pre-season camp

Melbourne: Australia's new coach, Tim Nielsen, will bring the country's 25 elite players to a pre-season training camp in August ahead of an arduous 18 months of continuous cricket, reports said on Friday.

The camp will involve physical fitness work, but there will be no repeat of last year's military-style pre-Ashes boot camp, which had players hiking, abseiling and embarking on midnight orienteering through dense forests.

Nielsen, who took over from long-time coach John Buchanan following Australia's victory in the World Cup in the Caribbean last April, has recently been interviewing each contracted player.

But this will be his first chance to address a new-look group he hopes will retain cricket's top ranking without retired stars Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and Damien Martyn.

``It will be a different set-up, a chance just to get everyone back together in that we have had a long break from play,'' Nielsen told the Herald-Sun on Friday. ``We will try and get our thoughts focused on where we are going to go over the next little while.''

Australia will compete in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa in September before touring India for seven one-day internationals. A home summer of Tests and one-dayers against Sri Lanka and India then awaits it along with the Chappell-Hadlee one-day series against New Zealand.

Test tours of Pakistan, the West Indies and India follow next year. — AFP

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