[Sohel]

Fact is we're not one of the top 8 test playing nations by any stretch of the imagination, and NONE of the conventional ideas with regards to which young player is "ready" to be brought into the senior side can be applied to us and our team full of dead weight with a straight face, unless one is totally removed from reality.

Our best players debuted in their teens and developed playing international cricket. Many, including myself, now believe that the highest level, not the utter farce known as the NCL, is the best place to develop young batsmen with ability because we don't play nearly enough A Team cricket. NCL can actually make a decent player less than decent, in my opinion.

By ability, I mean superior hand-eye coordination including great hand-speed and the ability the sight the ball early, desire and the ability to learn from mistakes. Temperament, meaning playing each ball according to its merit and therefore playing the highest percentage shot possible, will only get better with experience in such players, or so we hope.

While some of these promising young batsmen will fail, either technically (simply not good enough at the highest level) or mentally (unable to repeat and sustain initial success because of high expectation and pressure) others will survive, even thrive under this baptism by fire and become mainstays. That would, with due patience on all of our part, eventually build a solid batting lineup without dead weight, and capable of cohesion.

So, I don't have an issue with Asaad suggesting we bring in Soumya Sarkar right now as Tamim's partner. Will he succeed right away or over time provided he has been patiently given enough chances? I don't know. Is there a real possibility, because of his ability, that he may succeed right away or over time provided he has been patiently given enough chances? Yes.

I don't see a real alternative to doing what has worked for us in the past, meaning bringing in young players to see if they survive. We should remember that while we've been disappointed by Ashraful, Alok, Aftab, Rokon, Nafees Iqbal, Tushar Imran, Junaid Siddique Imroze and to a lesser extent, Shahriar Nafees Ahmed and Imrul Kayes Shagor, we've also seen success with Shakib, Tamim, and now Nasir. The jury's still out on Mushfiq.

I'm not too high on Shourobh and not at all high on Ratul, he's another Rokibul type of batsmen with limited ability and therefore like Rokibul has very little chance of sustaining success at the highest level, but am very high on Bijoy and increasingly, Soumya. Hom has temperament issues when not scoring singles from the onset of his innings, but I do believe that international cricket is the place for him to develop a better one.

Having said all that, we also need good bowlers to be truly competitive, and without quality coaching and a variety of pitches, that is more unlikely to happen. Sad really, because better bowlers bowling on a variety of pitches WILL make our batsmen better and significantly better prepared for the highest level.