Opening batsman Justin Langer has hailed the Australian cricket team`s unorthodox boot camp as an uplifting experience.
The Australians, preparing themselves for anything England might throw at them in the coming Ashes series, emerged from five days in the bush with a team spirit they believe will make them hard to beat.
The country`s 25 leading players, backpacks filled with army rations and carrying cans filled with water, slogged it out as part of coach John Buchanan`s team-building designs.
"I`ve seen human spirit out there and for me that was very uplifting. It was an awesome learning experience for all of us," Langer said at a media day here today.
"We were taken completely out of our comfort zone... Little sleep, little food, no mobile phones, no contact with your family.”
"For 10 years I have spoken to my wife and family every single day, no matter where I am in the world, there hasn`t been one day I`ve missed.”
"But I didn`t speak to my family for five days while I was in the camp. We didn`t have a bed, we didn`t have a shower, we didn`t have anything."
Master leg-spinner Shane Warne was one who was initially unconvinced about the merits of the commando-style camp and its timing.
Warne, who is leading Hampshire`s bid to win the English County championship, missed some vital matches to be with his Australian teammates in the bush, but he believed it achieved its objective.
"It was a misunderstanding. It wasn`t so much that I didn`t want to do the camp, it was more about the timing of it," Warne said today.
"But having gone through it the group has come a lot closer together.”
"We didn`t know much about the camp beforehand, I suppose that`s why a lot of us were apprehensive about what we were actually doing. No-one could tell us and that was the way John Buchanan wanted to do it."
Warne told of gruelling days in the bush, humping water cans around for hours and sleeping rough under the stars.
"Running up and down with water cans for five or six hours, pushing cars, sleeping in a sleeping bag with no tent out in the middle of nowhere, doing those sort of things," he said.
"The camp was not considered safe so we had to move somewhere else, orienteering through the middle of the night without a compass.”
"There were six-foot kangaroos out there, but we didn`t actually know that at the time.”
"It was out of our comfort zone and we learned what you actually achieve out of your comfort zone. I think it had a lot of aspects that were really good."
