England lockdown tales - Nutrition podcasts, a bake-off and sweet treats

by Rob Johnston • Last updated on Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 01:54 PM

Realising the need to up his fitness, Sibley shed 12 kilos in the lockdown period. © Getty

Emma Gardner jokes that she probably had more contact with England's players during the COVID-19 enforced lockdown than she had in the previous three years working with them as the team's nutritionist. Without the usual distractions of a packed schedule, Gardner was able to do more targeted work with each individual. She is not sure, however, that the players were particularly enamoured with the weekly weigh ins. Although at least one of them probably didn't mind them so much.

Dom Sibley's weekly results showed the scales moving in the right direction to the tune of 12kgs, or nearly two stone, after he had resolved to shed some weight on the tour to Sri Lanka. He had seen the fitness standards of the likes of Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler and realised he had some catching up to do. Although Sibley trained diligently during lockdown, changes to his diet led to the more svelte figure who opened the batting for England last week at the Ageas Bowl. He is now the leanest and fittest he has ever been.

The Warwickshire opener openly admits that he likes a treat or two, particularly after scoring some runs, and he met with Gardner during the tour to South Africa to speak about making better food choices. The lockdown period gave Sibley, and the rest of the squad, an opportunity to focus on learning about how to improve their diets and then putting that learning into practice. "We saw the opportunity while they were all at home, not able to do very much, to get some good nutrition work in with them," Gardner explains. "I rarely get the chance to educate them so we did loads of stuff."

Gardner put together weekly podcasts on topics picked by the players and put them on the squad's WhatsApp group. Topics ranged from basic things such as fuel and recovery, to sweet tooth alternatives and vegan diets. "They were just five minutes, I posted them each week and the lads listened in to them," Gardner says. They had the desired effect. She even had players calling her up from the supermarket on their weekly shop asking her what brand of chickpea crisps she had recommended on one of the podcasts.

The suggestions for the sweet tooth alternatives were a particular favourite. "If it's a scale of one to ten, something is not great if it's at one," Gardner says. "We try to get them somewhere above a one so if they're fans of biscuits, we try to get them towards things like popcorn bars or skinny popcorn. They do these chocolate oatcakes which are like a biscuit but they're much better and we try and shift them towards these. There are protein based ice creams which are good, they do Greek yoghurt ice creams which are much better than ice cream."

A simple recipe book was created for those players who wanted to use the time away from hotel restaurants and room service to improve their cooking. "We probably had 60% do their own cooking, 20% do meal plans delivered to their house and 20% do recipe boxes [where the specific ingredients for a recipe are sent to the players and they cook the food]," she says. "I think the majority of them really enjoyed getting in the kitchen and getting to live a relatively normal life compared to being on tour."

There were also "rate my bake" challenges, with each member of England's squad attempting to cook protein pancakes which the rest of the squad then rated on the team WhatsApp group. Sam Curran won, with Saqib Mahmood second and Joe Root third. "I'll be fair and I won't say who was last," Gardner laughs. "We had some good fun with that. It's something that we put out and wondered how many will actually do it. But fair play they all did."

The nutrition philosophy that Gardner uses is individualised, dependent on role and pitched at the level the players want. "We don't force it upon them," she says. "They'll all have principles of things that we're trying to achieve with them which they agree with us. Whether that be that they try to improve an aspect of their performance or they might be trying to improve their fitness. But then how much detail they want around that comes down to them.

"There will absolutely be requirements that fit all of them so for example they will all have a protein requirement from a muscle mass maintenance point of view so they would all be given nudges as to how to achieve that protein requirement. With fast bowlers they have a much higher energy expenditure so therefore, they have a much higher general energy intake requirement but also specifically carbohydrates. They will be given more specific advice around the night before a match, the game, how much carbohydrate they should be having.

"It's not like working in football where you're only dealing with an outfield and a goalkeeper. You've got batters, spinners, all-rounders, fast bowlers, all of them have completely different requirements. In cricket, you can fuel up and then be out within three balls so it's complex. I think that's where with the educational piece we've really tried to help the lads understand their individual requirement and then be able to adjust that depending on where they are in the match. We're still working on that but hopefully we're getting better at it."

Gardner liaises with all the grounds and hotels that England play and stay at, both at home and abroad, to ensure they understand the squad's nutritional requirements. She has written the menus for the meals served to England's players at both the Ageas Bowl and Emirates Old Trafford during the current series against West Indies. Although the current bubble allows Gardner to have arguably the most control she has ever had over what the players eat, there is always scope for some treats.

"One of the things in the menus within this bubble is, at the end of the match, we'll have a themed night which will be a cuisine like Mexican," she says. "There'll be a dessert on that night and a treat, just feel a little bit more relaxed than with performance nutrition food. Although 99% of them will eat in the hotel most nights, if they can get a Deliveroo they might do that too." cricbuzz

Judging by the sight of England's players, and the accounts from Gardner and the ECB's strength and conditioning department, the focus on nutrition during lockdown, allied to comprehensive fitness programmes, has clearly worked for the vast majority of the squad. It certainly has for Sibley. And if you ever fancy a protein pancake, Sam Curran is your man.

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England lockdown tales - Nutrition podcasts, a bake-off and sweet treats

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