Cricket is a process, not some random events. You need to have long term and short term plans to produce enough quality cricketers and continue their improvements. This is the only way to get successful as a cricketing nation.
It’s really a simple way to go. Nothing like rocket science. Anyone who understands cricket a bit can understand what to do. Bangladesh is a breeding field for cricketers these days. All we need to do is to guide and train them properly. The outcome will come automatically.
The Process of Developing Cricketers:
Now let us have a look how the process works. It’s very simple. Take a look at the basic way to generate enough good cricketers for national team. It has worked for other countries. So there is no reason that it won't work for us.
We need to invest and concentrate on all the levels from bottom to top. It’s really important. We often see that we need to work with players’ basic techniques at national team camp. It’s not the way to go. National team camp is not a place for babysitting. Basic technique and skill training should be done in the earlier parts of a player’s career. A level and national team training are for polishing a player, not for teaching basic skills.
School cricket should be made stronger and more competitive. We have to identify the prospective players at this level. There are local clubs in every town of the country. Identification should be done at this level too. Trained coaches should be used to identify players at these levels.
Once we have a group of potential players in every region we need train them properly in age group RCA camps. Trained coaches should be used during this training process. Players who do outstanding in this level should be grafted to RCA team for NCL and also should be promoted to National age level teams. This level must involve coaching from level 2 coaches.
This way, we will get a strong flow of players for national cricket academy. Players at this level of camps will be trained with advanced skills like how to play on bouncy wickets, how to bowl reverse swings etc. National cricket academy must have level 3 coaches.
Players who perform outstanding in national academy level will be promoted to national A team. These guys will now be getting ready to face international challenges. A team coaching will be as good as national team.
Finally we get the desired competent players for the national team. Players who under perform in national level will be demoted to A level and exciting prospects from the A team will replace them.
A good idea is to place players from all levels to overseas leagues whenever possible. BCB should make some agreements with different test playing nation boards to make this happen.
Proper Co-ordination:
At present, our national team, A team and academy team are not working with proper co-ordinations. This should not be the case. Coaching teams from all these teams must sit periodically to form and follow a proper plan for developing a proper player supply channel. For example, our national team doesn’t have any good leg spinner at this moment. The coaching team from the national side should ask for a few good potential leg spinners from the A team and academy team with a time limit of 2 years or so. The priority of those teams would be identifying and preparing the leg spinners which are asked by the national team.
As the supply of players to the national team depends on the lower levels, without proper co-ordination we would never be able to find the right players for the national team.