Three kinds of soil were laid down to make cricket pitches. At first glance there was nothing too different about them, but once the preparation was complete, the contrasts were obvious. The first had sunken a little lower than ground level, the second was higher than the grass around it, and the third significantly more raised.

The pitches were made to resemble a Pakistani, Gabba and WACA surface respectively, and Mudassar Nazar could almost not believe his eyes when he saw the amount of variation close up.

"If I had that available to me when I was playing Test cricket, I would definitely have been better prepared," he said.

The players passing through the ICC Academy in Dubai Sports City will be. The high-performance centre there seeks to develop cricketers who can play in any conditions, and its doors are open to cricketers from the UAE and elsewhere. The academy is run as a joint venture between Dubai Sports City - a facility founded by three Emirati entrepreneurs with the blessing of Sheikh Mohammed - and the ICC, whose offices are across the road.

Alongside the cricket facility is a football school, run by former Real Madrid player Michel Salgado, which contains a full-sized FIFA-approved artificial pitch. Ernie Els has designed a golf course, there is an American football league, and by the end of this year there will also be a swimming facility, fitness centre and three-star hotel. The aim is to create a sports world. For cricketers that means unprecedented access to information and experience they would only otherwise get through extensive travel.

The two cricket ovals have outfields made of rye grass. Each has ten pitches, of which half are created from Australasian soil and half from Asian. In the nets there are 35 strips. A third of them resemble pitches in Australia and South Africa, another third those in the subcontinent, and the last third England. There are also six indoor nets: two are fast, bouncy pitches, another two are batsman-friendly, and the last two have a specially laid underfloor that creates the bounce and turn of a raging turner.

They allow for acclimatisation to the entire international cricket scene in one place. "It's fantastic for the growth of players," Nazar, head coach at the academy, said. "It means cricketers can develop a range of skills in one place."

England made use of the facility ahead of their tour to India last year, spending most of their time on the spin-friendly surfaces. They went on to win the series 2-1. David Jenkins, the academy's general manager, proudly said they credited some portion of the win to the time they spent in Dubai.

Elite teams are welcome to use the academy, at a cost, whenever the need arises, and Jenkins hopes more of them will stop over in "the middle of the cricket world", but the main focus of the centre is "to support the second tier". Associate countries are charged different rates - relative to their size and cash flow - and many have made used of the services there.