BANGALORE, Aug 31: India's preparations for next year's World Cup in the West Indies have begun in earnest with a novel training camp, vice-captain Virender Sehwag said on Thursday.India coach Greg Chappell launched the week-long rolling camp on Wednesday by calling up just five of the squad's 16 players for action on the first two days.

The remaining players will be split in two further groups to enable the coach to devote personal attention to each cricketer.

“The previous camps focused on physical conditioning and mental toughness, but this is an ideas camp,” said Sehwag, who has scored 4,608 runs in 153 one-dayers with seven centuries.

“It's important to take ideas from everybody. Many times only the captain, vice-captain and the coach hold discussions, but other players also have good ideas.”

Sehwag said different ideas would be put together and tried out during warm-up games at Chennai on Sept 8 and 9 before the team's departure for Malaysia for a tri-series against Australia and the West Indies.

The series will be played in Kuala Lumpur from Sept 12-24.

India will host in October the ICC Champions Trophy, the second-biggest tournament after the World Cup featuring all the 10 Test-playing nations.

But Sehwag said the aim was to look beyond these two tournaments.

“We are not just preparing for these events. We are preparing for the next eight months. We are training and practising keeping in mind the World Cup,” said Sehwag.

“I feel it's important to improve in all areas. If we do well in all departments of game, we will be in a better position to win. But if we concentrate on only one aspect and ignore the others, we may lose.”—AFP