[Sohel]

the facts of life: provided the comparative quality and short length of our domestic first class cricket - still being sacrificed for the stagnating effects of club cricket - home is obviously not the ideal place to groom talent, yet. our selections must continue to be talent-based until both the quality and length of domestic first class are enhanced and lengthened. lacking the aforementioned basics, as we do now, talent can only be groomed under the spotlight. first of all, genuine talent needs to be recognized in terms of fair standards that measure a player's: 1) hand-eye coordination, 2) temperament, and 3) the ability to learn, somewhat accurately. then they need to be worked into the senior side after performing well for the junior and A-side before debuting against weaker opponents like zimbabwe, kenya, or ireland. however, if the senior team has holes, and if talent is available to plug those holes, they need to be brought in quicker ... and once they're in, they need to be given ample time to learn on the job until the quality of our domestic cricket dictate otherwise. i'm willing to give genuinely talented ODI players (ash, tamim, alok, aftab, junaid, shakib, mushy, mash, rajib) up to 100 matches, and genuinely talented test prospects up to 25 test matches (ash, alok, shakib, mushy, the iqbal brothers, shariar nafees, nirala, mash, rajib, enam and dollar) to prove their mettle. once into the starting line-up, such a player needs to be provided with realistic match-by-match performance expectations, and given an entire ODI series (3 to 5 matches) and/or at least 2 consecutive test matches before being benched again if they fail to meet those initial expectations. the only player of the three mentioned in this thread, i'd put down nirala (raquibul) as the only such talent, albeit primarily from the # 2 and # 3 perspective from my talent checklist.

dhiman's a good choice for the back-up keeper job. based on what i've seen of both him and mushy, he may be the better keeper ... but mushy's the more technically sound batsman, more enthusiastic behind the stumps, and has the temperament go with a remarkable capacity to learn from his gaffes. mushy # 1, dhiman # 2 ... i don't see why not now.

back to nirala. despite having played only 9 FC matches, his 300 and 100 NO are impossible ignore. we are a batting-challenged team in both forms of the game and he is needed now. i'd have him replace HaBa in the middle order right away, practice a lot with modified tennis balls (for lack of sporting pitches in BD), and groom him for the opening slot for test matches as his performance gradually moves him up the batting order. again, i don't see why he can't be in the team now. i don't think he'll do any worse than some of the non-performers in the team, still riding the selectors' coat-tails, and trying to have us believe that it is still possible to teach strokeless or compulsive old cricketers new tricks. there's no reason to buy what they'll try to have us believe, unless you consider the puerile and typically expensive sentimentality a reason. i for one, think of such things as simply stagnating. nirala in now.

nadif's a bashar-like (before he became HaBa) batsman, without too many of those compulsions and pavlovian responses to the opposition bowling. bashar, however was a better stroke player in his day. nadif can wait until nirala takes over the test opening duties in a year or two, before given a shot to start his international test career at the # 7 spot, right below alok and aftab ... unless our selectors' unhealthy fetish for dragging around old baggage creates a crisis and opens a door for his slightly premature entry.