In November 1988, 12 souls who braved the inaugural year of the AIS/ACB Commonwealth Bank Cricket Academy gathered in Brisbane to mark the 30-year anniversary of what was, for us, and incredible year.

As part of two days of reminiscing we visited the current Centre of Excellence, based in Brisbane. The programmes and facilities for today’s athletes are light years ahead of that experienced by the original 15 of us back in 1988.

The current facility is incredible – lap pool, hot pool, cold pool, recovery room/MASH Unit, nets with pitches designed to replicate different conditions and a state-of-the-art gymnasium – I could go on. My overarching thought when touring the facilities was that they definitely would have helped me become a better athlete, but not necessarily a better cricketer.

Since 1988 there have been 389 athletes move through a programme that has morphed in every way imaginable. We were a squad of 15 who were farmed out to local Adelaide Grade Clubs, this moved to a squad of 24 where they essentially toured and played each other, and the current thinking is that more concentrated groups of elite talent in shorter bursts of high intensity training

https://www.cricconnect.com/profile/528/adrian-tucker/blog/1191/so-thatrsquos-what-30-years-feels-like