Julian Wood hopes to have England batsmen hitting opponents for six

The future of England's one-day six-hitting is being aided by an innovative coaching strategy born in the batting cages of the Texas Rangers.

England's record in limited-overs tournaments leaves plenty to be desired, with their World Twenty20 success in 2010 an oasis in a desert of disappointment.

A new-look one-day side was unveiled over the summer, with encouraging results, but the England and Wales Cricket Board have been open-minded in their attempts to institutionalise a more aggressive style of play.

Enter Julian Wood, a former first-class cricketer with Hampshire and now a batting coach with a unique take on the discipline.

On a family holiday in the United States, Wood developed an interest in baseball and began developing his 'Power Hitting Programme', a focused regime coaching inspired by the sport's biomechanics.

A handful of counties work with Wood, while current England opener Alex Hales and World T20 winner Michael Lumb have both sought personal sessions.

But it is the ECB who have become his highest-profile partner, and after working with the performance programme at Loughborough he is heading to Dubai to work with some of the England Lions batsmen.

Explaining his unlikely journey, the 46-year-old says: "It happened purely by accident when a friend of mine moved to the States to live. I went out for a holiday and my two boys were hitting in the batting cages they have there.

"I bumped into a guy called Scott Coolbaugh, who was the hitting coach for the Rangers at the time. He didn't know anything about cricket, but we got chatting and that was it.

"I went back to the States and Scott said why don't you come and spend a week with the Rangers? I was purely watching, chatting to the hitters, I was there on game day in the dugout...then I started writing stuff down, started putting it all together and thought 'there's something in this'."

Wood's approach to the game can sound somewhat technocratic - he talks of 'base stance loads', 'rotational power' and 'power ratio transfer' - but the end result is mass entertainment: six hitting.

"Basically a ball has got to leave the bat at 83mph to clear a 90-yard boundary," he says with calculated certainty.

"So I'm trying to get them as close to that as they can. In baseball, that sort of thing is huge. In my academy now, the first thing I do is look at a kid's hand speed.

"I've got 10-year-olds doing what the England guys are doing.

"It's trying to create the modern-day hitter because the game is going like that.

"I've spent five years doing this now and I don't think anybody else is doing it as in depth.

"People will say we practice this that and the other, but they won't have looked at it as deep as I have."