Inside the England Lions camp: How Andrew Flintoff is drilling young stars with the help of a heated tent ahead of tour Down Under, what makes the former Top Gear presenter a special coach and the players ready to step up for Ashes duty

A late October morning and Daily Mail Sport is inside the heated tent over the grass pitches at the ECB’s Loughborough HQ, where the wickets have been prepared to replicate conditions in Australia.

The temperature outside is 11°C but inside this marquee, which is big enough to host a wedding, the heaters and fans mean that the conditions are much more akin to what England can expect to face Down Under.

Daily Mail Sport is here at the National Performance Centre with the England Lions, coached by Andrew Flintoff, who are training at Loughborough before they fly out to Australia this weekend.

There are names from the senior squad present with Matthew Potts and Shoaib Bashir preparing before they head Down Under. The likes of Ben Stokes, Josh Tongue and Will Jacks have been here in recent days.

In addition to the 16-man Ashes squad, England will have an 18-man Lions touring party in Australia which will include Test-capped players like spinners Rehan Ahmed and Tom Hartley. It’s a squad that also contains four players representing the Lions for the first time, in 17-year-old Somerset batsman Thomas Rew, Yorkshire all-rounder Matthew Revis, 23, Glamorgan's Ben Kellaway, who can bowl spin with either arm, and Jersey-born batsman Asa Tribe, 21.

Come the afternoon, Ed Barney, the ECB Performance Director, is showing us the presentation he delivered to the Lions when they convened at Loughborough.

The question is asked about whether certain picks have been made in case, for example Zak Crawley or Ben Duckett, get injured during the Ashes.

‘The Lions is not a second team,’ insists Barney, who took over from Mo Bobat last year. ‘We’re going after supporting the highest potential and the next best so we’re always blending a balance. That’s where we have the fluidity around who we select. If you look back over the summer, we had Woakesy (Chris Woakes) playing for the Lions leading into the India series. 

'So we have that ability to be flexible and use it for the right thing. Equally, when we’re in Australia and if one of the (Ashes) players isn’t playing for England, they can drop into the Lions to up their time in the middle or their bowling load. All these things have been carefully considered.'

It’s why the Lions, who have yet to name a captain for the tour, are scheduled to play two four-day matches against a Cricket Australia XI in Perth and against Australia A in Brisbane at the same time as the first and second Test matches in both cities. With the second Test at The Gabba a day-nighter, the Lions game is scheduled to start a day later.

Barney stresses that it hasn’t been communicated to the players that they may get called up to the Ashes squad but is clear that they should all be aware of the opportunity.

‘The players should have an unambiguous recognition and clarity that we are supporting and developing them as future international cricketers,’ Barney says. ‘They recognise the timeline that they might play could be quite quick or over a long period of time. The reality is that those opportunities present themselves by chance, coincidence, injury or anything - so we want to prepare and support them and we want the transition to be as seamless as possible.'

For someone like Matt Fisher, who turns 28 in Australia, the warm-up game against Stokes’ side at Lilac Hill in Perth in mid-November is the perfect opportunity. It was after the 2021-22 Ashes when Fisher benefitted, with England initially deciding to move on from Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, and he won his only England cap on a tour of the West Indies.

‘Four years ago (on the Lions tour), I bowled lovely and we saw what happened at the end of the winter,' Fisher says. 'So I know first-hand what bowling in those games can do. You can have sleepless nights when you dream about bowling at my mate Brooky (Harry Brook). But it’s good stuff because you're trying to get out people who you want to impress. And I'm already thinking about how to get him out.’

Like the others Daily Mail Sport speaks to, Fisher, who left Yorkshire for Surrey last year, praises the impact of Flintoff.

‘What Fred is really good at is trying to get the last five or 10 per cent out of people. I think that’s the difference with me,’ says Fisher. ‘I know that I can be a decent county bowler but if I want to go to the next step, it's about going to a place that I've not been before - in terms of physicality, resilience and mentality.’

As the oldest member of the Lions squad, the fast bowler is one of the few who can actually remember Flintoff’s impact 20 years ago. Some of his Lions team-mates were not born until after the 2005 Ashes.

Rew, born in 2007, had just got out of a school lesson when he got the call from Flintoff to tell him he was selected for the Lions. He will take his A-level work on tour with him and tells Daily Mail Sport that his first memory of the Ashes was seeing Stokes' Headingley heroics in 2019. ‘It definitely built up those emotions inside me, thinking I want to be there one day,’ says Rew.

As for 20-year-old Eddie Jack, who was born during the last Test of the 2005 series and was subsequently given the middle name Vaughan by his parents, he tells us that his first memory of the Ashes was when Stuart Broad took eight for 15 at Trent Bridge in 2015. Glamorgan's Tribe reveals that he had to double check it was really Flintoff when he got the call.

It may be a little early for them to be making their own memories yet but as Barney stresses, the ‘dovetailing’ aspect with England is what makes it so ‘exciting’, particularly given the ‘really high degree of alignment’ in English cricket, with both Stokes and Brendon McCullum getting regular video updates from the Lions.

‘They’ve got this incredibly unique opportunity of shadowing an Ashes tour and experiencing it, without being right in the middle of it,' says Barney. 'But when it comes to that time down the line, they will have some of that experience to draw on. One of the cool things in the last six weeks is that we’ve intentionally designed a natural crossover, even in terms of the casual collisions of Lions players exposed to England players. 

'For example, you have a 19-year-old netting for half an hour with Mark Wood and Stokes, then walking out with a Cheshire grin all over his face. That’s invaluable from a development, technical and psychological perspective.'

Much has already been made of whether the Lions will provide Stokes’ side with a strong enough contest - it is England's only warm-up before the Ashes start in Perth - but Barney is adamant in his view.

‘I have no shadow of a doubt that the three-day fixture will be a quality exposure that will continue to aid England in their preparation,’ he insists.

It is yet to be confirmed whether that game will have a mixture of squads to allow Test batters to face Test bowlers but day by day, the heat is ramping up ahead of that Ashes curtain-raiser in Perth on November 21.

For the Lions, it’s like having a front row seat to the Royal Rumble but knowing you could get tagged in at any given moment.

ENGLAND AND LIONS FIXTURES DOWN UNDER

13-15 November: England v England Lions (Lilac Hill, Perth) 

21-25 November: First Test (Optus Stadium, Perth)

21-24 November: Cricket Australia XI v England Lions (Lilac Hill, Perth)

4-8 December: Second Test  (The Gabba, Brisbane)

5-8 December: Australia A v England Lions (Allan Border Field, Brisbane)

17-21 December: Third Test (Adelaide Oval, Adelaide)

26-30 December: Fourth Test (MCG, Melbourne)

4-8 January: Fifth Test (SCG, Sydney)