Cricket Australia’s decision to hold a camp in the United Arab Emirates rather than play a tour match in Sri Lanka has been hailed as a secret weapon for subcontinent success.
Andrew McDonald’s 16-player Test squad will fly out to the Persian Gulf across staggered flights on January 18 and 19 to spend five days at the ICC Academy in Dubai.
There, the squad will acclimatise to the kind of sticky conditions that await in Sri Lanka, while enjoying state-of-the-art facilities.
Retired Test spinner Steve O’Keefe was a member of the first Australian Test squad that went into camp in the UAE ahead of a subcontinent tour – the 2017 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India.
A difficult preparation for the 2016 Sri Lanka tour had helped motivate the decision to take preparations off-shore – no Sri Lankan player who featured in the one-off tour match would go on to play in the two-Test series.
“It’s not disrespectful to them, but they bowled their second-rate spinners, they bowled quicks essentially the whole time,” O’Keefe told AAP.
“They tried to produce a green wicket. They do everything possible to try and make the conditions that they won’t face (in the Tests).”
Australian teams have since returned to the training base in Dubai, most notably ahead of the triumphant T20 World Cup campaign held in the UAE in 2021.
O’Keefe has fond recollections of his own time at the ICC Academy, which boasts sprawling ovals set up for practice games, in-house catering and accommodation, and the kind of professional gymnasiums that can be difficult to source in Sri Lanka.
Best of all, there are dozens of different wickets available that can be prepared with Asian soils to suit the Australian team’s requirements.
“You can manufacture conditions that you think may suit, and I think at times that can be more beneficial than a tour game,” O’Keefe said.
On a personal level, O’Keefe reaped the rewards of the UAE detour, named player of the match as Australia claimed a first win in India since 2004 in the series opener.
O’Keefe’s match figures of 12-70 are still the third-best by any visiting spinner on a tour of India, and he hopes another UAE camp will ignite the current crop of players ahead of the two-match Sri Lanka series.
“It was instrumental to our preparation for the Indian series,” O’Keefe said.
“I feel like this is needed if they want to get off on the right foot, and they can’t afford to start off poorly because it’s a two-game series. I think this is the best preparation, I’m glad they’re doing it.”
The camp will be particularly beneficial for the less-experienced hands on the tour.
Seven members of the squad have not been selected for a Test tour of Sri Lanka before, including spin-bowling options Todd Murphy, Matthew Kuhnemann and Cooper Connolly.
“It’s not the same as being over in Galle and it wasn’t the same as being over in India, but it just got you in the right headspace for what you are coming up against,” O’Keefe said.
“Particularly given there’s some young spinners going over, it’d be nice for them to go and talk to guys like Steve Smith, Ussie Khawaja, guys like that about how they go about it and what to expect.”
Content Source: www.perthnow.com.au