Former England pacer Chris Tremlett reminisced how he accidentally left fellow quick James Anderson hurting with a broken rib ahead of the 2010-11 Ashes tour to Australia.
Tremlett and Anderson were both part of this bonding session organised by the team management in a pre-series camp in Germany, where while sparring at each other, the former unintentionally damaged the latter's rib.
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The right-arm quick, who played 12 Tests, 15 ODIs and a T20I for England, recalled the incident while speaking on 'The Cricket Podcast'.
"There is a film out called The Edge and they have a little bit of that – behind the scenes footage of that trip in Germany," Tremlett said. "I actually got a lot out of that trip, it was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done, three or four days away in Germany, we didn’t know where we were going … bricks over our head, doing press-ups in the middle of the night, it was minus five degrees, it was really tough, but it kind of brought us together, I think."
"Some people, like KP said, it was an absolute waste of time … he found that pretty difficult. But certainly being out of the side, for myself, I had been out of the squad for a couple of years, so coming in … it certainly felt like I was back in the mix. Everyone being in their own comfortable environment brought a lot of people closer together," he added.
The then skipper Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower wanted players to experience a high-intensity environment well before the series that was to take a lot out of them physically and mentally over the course of that winter.
"Joe Calzaghe, I think, was meant to come and do some boxing," remembers Tremlett. "For some reason, he couldn’t make it but we ended up doing this boxing thing anyway and I was paired up against Jimmy Anderson. Put our head guard on and just try and beat the shit out of each other. Your natural instinct when someone starts hitting you is to hit them back and I whacked Jimmy really, really hard in his ribs, and he cracked a rib."
"Actually I think I fought Andrew Strauss and Tim Bresnan maybe as well, and I actually had a bit of a dodgy rib."
"I’m not sure if it was the best idea, it was quite good fun at the time. I remember Craig Kieswetter and Kevin Pietersen were literally having a proper build-up … properly going at each other. I think Jimmy Anderson had a cracked rib for about four weeks, it was a bit touch and go by the first Test but luckily he was fine," he added.
Thankfully, Anderson recovered on time and took 24 wickets at an average of 26.04 in England's historic 3-1 series win down under.
