Run the line: How Australia keep raising the bar

Megan Schutt clearly remembers her first meeting with Australia's physical conditioning coach after she earned her maiden call-up to the national side in 2012.

Aged 19, Schutt had been plucked out of South Australia's domestic system for an ODI debut – and she had no inkling of the learning curve that awaited her.

"South Australia at the time didn't have a professional program in place, or even anything close to one, and when I made my debut for Australia, I'd done zero gym, zero running sessions," Schutt told cricket.com.au this week.

"I'll never forget my first training session with the Australians and our S&C at the time, Russell Jarrett, asked, 'What's your gym program?'

"And I was like, 'My what? Oh, we don't do gym in SA'. His jaw hit the floor.

"I obviously had some natural athleticism and that got me to where I was, luckily ... but it was a very big welcome to the world for me."

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More than a decade later, Schutt has forged a reputation not only as one of Australia's greatest white-ball bowlers, but also as a world-class outfielder.

The Australian women's cricket team has always prided itself on setting a high bar when it comes to fitness and fielding prowess.

In the professional era, those standards are being taken to new heights.

Cricket can be a game of centimetres, whether it's moving just that little bit faster to cut off a boundary, getting into the right position for a difficult catch, or turning ones into twos.

You only need to think back to Ellyse Perry's full-body dive to save a certain boundary late in the 2023 T20 World Cup semi-final against India, a game Australia ultimately won by five runs.

That athleticism and agility in the field was a notable point of difference between Australia and England during the recent women's Ashes, and generated countless headlines – even inspiring a t-shirt – after England's under-pressure coach Jon Lewis made the now-infamous observation that Australia's fairer climate and outdoorsy culture handed them a natural advantage.

Reflecting at the end of the series, Clare Connor, the ECB's managing director of women's cricket, gave a more considered response, noting: "It's been very evident that the Australia women's cricket team are setting new standards of athleticism in our sport.

"Our players will have to look at that level of athleticism and speed and power that is evident in their fielding and see that as a new benchmark."

In many ways, this is not new. Australia's top echelon of players was setting the global standard in this facet of the game long before the professional era allowed them to focus on their cricket full time.

But that the current Australian team, as a whole, continue to raise the bar means that while the perceived 'gap' between them and their rivals has narrowed in some areas, this is one where they have remained ahead of the pack.

That is no accident, as Australia's physical performance coach Jordan Stares, who has been working with the team for the past 18 months, explained to cricket.com.au.

"To start with, we just do the basics really well," he said. "We start with a really big focus on base levels of athleticism, we make sure that our athletes are strong, we make sure that we've got good aerobic capacity so that we can handle adverse conditions or back-to-back games.

"We focus on basic movement, running mechanics, lateral movement – so we ensure that we've got really good athletic raw materials to start with."

But that, Stares explained, really is just the beginning.

To ensure Australia can maintain their advantage over their rivals, they have been looking at other ways to extend the players' capabilities.

"In more recent times, we've been trying to not just focus on capacity, but actually look at the conditioning demands of the game, so blending some of our fitness work into our fielding work and trying to really blur the lines between the physical and the skill," he said.

For Stares, adapting to the rapidly evolving nature of the women's game is part of that challenge.

An increasingly busy international schedule, alongside greater opportunities to play in overseas T20 leagues, means players' workloads are higher than ever.

But where there is challenge, there is also possibility, and Stares is using that to help his players evolve their previously seasonal approach to conditioning.

"We're trying to build year on year … to avoid getting into this cycle of getting fit in preseason, and then by the time you get to the end of the season, you've lost your strength, you've lost your fitness, and from a capacity point of view, you then have to start again," he said.

"That's why we try and maintain it as well as we can through the season, knowing that it's very fast approaching that preseason will not be a thing anymore in international cricket.

"In other sports, you may get fit from playing, we don't believe that to be the case with cricket … so we have to find other times to get that work in.

"We're probably a bit more aggressive with that than some other teams. We understand that to ensure that we are where we want to be, there's some 'give to get'.

"Where other teams may prioritise being fresh, we try and micro-dose little bits of work here and there to ensure that we don't de-train over the course of the season.

"My job is to find the line of what we can do from a training aspect, and we try and live on that line as much as we can without stepping over it into (a place) where we start fatiguing and seeing reduced performance.

"We've tried to push the boundaries on what we can do from a training perspective, and we've maybe tiptoed over it a couple of times, and we've learned some things ... it's trying to find where is that line and to live on it, as opposed to being scared to go there and potentially not getting the long-term benefits."

That approach was put to the test during the recent multi-format Ashes, a series that featured three ODIs, three T20Is and the Test across the space of 22 days, with each game played at a new venue.

It was the perfect opportunity for Australia to walk – or run – that line, in a careful balancing act of game days, recovery, travel days, training and rest days.

By the end of the Test on February 1, Australia had sealed an unprecedented 16-0 series sweep – and it was the manner in which they completed it that pleased Stares the most.

"The Ashes was a really nice positive reinforcement of some of the work we've done – we saw some really good demonstrations of athleticism in the field," he said.

"The fact that we saw some of those athletic efforts all the way through the series, even up until the last day, was very pleasing."

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Australia's culture of athletic excellence is one the entire team buys into, and for Stares, that made adjusting to his new role 18 months ago far easier.

That squad-wide mindset went to new levels during the Lanning-Haynes-Mott era, and since taking over as head coach in 2022, Shelley Nitschke has reinforced it as a key pillar of her own approach.

"I might put the content together, it's actually just facilitating Shell's vision of what she wants her team to look like and how they're going to play," Stares said.

"For me (coming in) it was really easy, because we had a really good group of players and staff who were already really committed, and they already had really good athletic capacities, really good training ethic.

"I've just been able to come in and test some ideas, knowing that the players will eat it up and do the work."

When asked how Australia keep themselves accountable, Schutt was a touch blunter.

Unsurprisingly, the world's most competitive team are equally competitive with one another.

And if anyone is suspected of slacking off, they'll hear about it.

"What's great is we push each other," Schutt said. "We're all extremely competitive human beings, and that's across the board … the nets are competitive, the fielding sessions we have are competitive.

"But we're also competitive in the gym, we all want to have the best results.

"We also call out people who are slacking ... I don't think the English, or any other culture, are as good as calling out bulls--- as Australians are and I think that's held us in good stead, if I'm honest.

"You obviously check in first, ask 'Are you OK?' and if we find out there's a reason, that's all well and good.

"But if not, we're pretty good, I think, at going, 'You know, you probably need to be doing more than that' or 'There's a reason we're doing this'.

"And we complain along the way, don't get us wrong. We don't do all this willy-nilly ... I know for myself, I need a lot of explanation, I need to know why we're doing this specific exercise, and how is that going to benefit me, and they're great at explaining that."

That work ethic or natural athleticism is not something that comes naturally to all – irrespective of their proximity to the Bondi-to-Coogee walk.

Beth Mooney, the world's No.1 ranked batter who has a reputation for her indefatigable running between wickets, has previously spoken to cricket.com.au of her moment of reckoning in 2015.

Told by then-coach Matthew Mott that her fitness was the only thing holding her back from making it as an international cricketer, the then-uncapped Mooney bought a road bike and spent her player leave period transforming herself into an athlete.

She debuted in 2016 and is now Australia's fourth all-time run scorer across formats.

In Schutt's case, the pace bowler was blessed with natural athleticism and skill that gave her a shot at the highest level.

But to stay there, she had to completely remodel her attitude towards training.

"I guess because I got to that level without having to do hard work in those (strength and conditioning) areas, I was slapped in the face with, 'Well, how can I be still a decent cricketer and not have those elements behind me?'

"For a while, I didn't buy in and didn't have the greatest work ethic … then, obviously, over time, I saw some results, saw some fitness test change, and started to see first-hand the results of that hard work.

"I went, 'Oh, this actually makes a lot of sense and this is going to keep me on the park for a long time' … I've played for Australia as a bowler for what, 12 years? And touch wood, haven't been under the knife yet."

These days, Schutt can see the example set by Australia's players, combined with the professionalisation of the domestic system, means those hoping to climb the ranks are better prepared than ever.

For his part, Stares is also working closely with his counterparts at the states, partially to support the CA-contracted players when they are not on tour, but also to keep a close eye on the next generation and ensuring the transition period the Australian team will undergo over the coming few years as senior players hang up the boots is as smooth as possible.

"We're blessed to have the professional setups that we do in our states," Schutt said.

"The girls now that come in, they've been a part of a professional system with running and strength since they were in Under-15s, or Under-17s – they're fully equipped and know how it works and what it takes to be at that level.

"It's honestly really cool to see, because that's why the kids of today just transition into the Australian side, or Aus A side, so seamlessly."

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While the schedule is increasingly busy, there is some immediate relief, with the upcoming autumn and winter presenting the Australian players with a rare extended period off between tours.

While many will feature in The Hundred in August, their next international series, following this month's T20Is in New Zealand, will be pre-World Cup ODIs against India in September.

It is an ideal chance for players to get their houses in order before the start of the new Future Tours Program, which will see the Australians on the road through the winter months until at least 2029.

For Stares, it will also be a chance to try a few things – and hopefully, help Australia raise the bar even further in season 2025-26.

"When we do have the opportunity (of more time), like we do this winter – and this will be the last big opportunity we'll have for a couple of years with the FTP – we'd like to really spend a bit more time looking at some game-specific simulation work," he said.

"How do our fielding drills elicit a physiological response from an aerobic point of view, or a repeat effort point of view?

"How can we replicate the hardest parts of a game, whether that be the last two overs of a T20 where teams are going after it, and you've got a right- and left-hander at the crease, and you're having to go from boundary to boundary.

"Those are the things that we're trying to replicate a high level of cricket specificity on top of physical work."