[Ian Pont]

Originally Posted by beshideshi
As disheartening as it is to say, our pace bowling attack looked like it was made up for amateur bowlers trying to compete with pros and struggling at almost every corner. We have failed to follow the basics of pace bowling, bowled way too short/wide way too often and that has undone the hard work done by pacers in the rest of the over.
I do like Shafi/Rubel combo in ODIs, but seems like they are not ready for test level yet. But what can we do, just wrap our arms around and wait for them to grow? BCB must take some actions, and here are a few ideas that have come to my mind
1. Root level search: I saw Fire in babylon recently and saw how Clive Lloyd searched all over the Caribbeans and came up with the deathly quartet. BCB must do similar searches, I find it hard to believe that amongst 150 million people we won't have 2 bowlers who can consistently knock the 90mph barrier. There has to be some talent hidden in the rural/urban areas and BCB must act to extract them

2. Search abroad for pacers: There are many Bangladeshis playing at respectable levels in England/South Africa/Australia, why not pick a couple of pacers who are doing good at sub-state level, give them adequate training and see how they go.

3. Send potential national team pacers abroad to play: Send some of the youngsters, say Alauddin Babu over to Australia to play grade cricket for a whole season, or to minor counties. Playing in such conditions will be extremely helpful for players who are willing to make the jump from academy to A team.

I don't think hiring a better coach will be a sustainable solution, we need to develop a fast bowling culture where we are used to seeing 4 pace men in our team and not 4 spinners. Spinners can win you ODIs at home, but in order to really come up as a strong cricketing nation we need to have quality pacemen. Otherwise we have to be satisfied by winning the odd ODI against the G8 at home. It's time BCB wakes up and acts on this issue.

To help you, this from the India newspapers recently. It shows that even at state level the issues have already been identified:

Haryana Cricket Association (HCA) has devised plans to make an extensive talent hunt from the urban and rural areas of the State, on the lookout for genuine pace bowlers.

“We will go for talent hunt for the High Performance Programme starting with the Chaudhary Bansi Lal Pace Bowling scheme, from structured cricket centres like the district cricket associations and urban areas, as well as from rural areas where the boys may not be into cricket, but playing some other sports or doing agriculture etc., but has the talent for the game,” explained HCA secretary Anirudh Chaudhary.

He said the HCA was in talks with England-based Ian Pont, who was the pace bowling coach of the Bangladesh World Cup team, and author of the book, ‘Fast Bowlers’ Bible’. Pont specialises in bio-mechanics that says that the power generated in the body is used for the delivery of the ball. “We want to unearth very quick bowlers, starting the talent hunt on a smaller scale, but will expand as we go along, with the help of sponsors. Pont’s brief will not only be to train a selective group of say ten players, and coaching the coaches, while the other group of 30-40 boys will be trained by four Indian coaches,” explained the HCA secretary. “Our emphasis will be on sincerity and discipline as we have often seen that some players are talented, but insincere and undisciplined,” he stated.