Nawaz stresses on long term plan to prepare youngsters
He also focuses on winning Youth World Cup
Sports Reporter
Bangladesh Under-19 coach Naveed Nawaz stressed on building a long term plan to prepare the young players for the national team but at the same time kept his focus on winning the Youth World Cup, a trophy that eluded Bangladesh in 2016 when they hosted the tournament.
Bangladesh youth finished the tournament as third, their best result in the history but was not as up to the mark as they needed to be when they played the last tournament in New Zealand this year.
Naveed Nawaz, the former U-19 coach of Sri Lanka team, said he wants to make a fine tune between the short term and long term plan to help Bangladesh fulfill both of the goals.
In any U19 programme thats the long term plan of preparing cricketers for the national team. Your short term planning is that you want to win the World Cup and in the long run you want to see how we can produce more players into the nation system, Nawaz said in his first interaction with the Bangladesh media yesterday at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
Thats being my plan while I was the U19 coach in Sri Lanka, I did the same thing, for last six years there. I can see in the past as well there has been lots players going through the U19 and representing the country which is a good sign. I hope to work on that as well.
Nawaz had already spent sometimes with the U-19 players but refused to make comment on them, citing the reason that he needs to scrutinize them more.
Initially I saw the boys in Khulna briefly. They played couple of matches and all that. There were only 15 boys there but I was also keen to look at the other boys and find out how we can work and find combination of players, he said.
The plan would be, the World Cup is in 2020 and there is lot of work to be done before that in terms of preparing them technically and physically-- to prepare them up to the competition and prepare them mentally. We will use the windows that we have apart from the time we are playing teams on tour. So those windows we will use to prepare them for that level of cricket. I am really excited for the cricket that these boys are playing and I think there is a long journey for them and we hope to do really well.
As Bangladeshs continuous search for the fast bowlers get intense as the days progress, the BCB keeps eye on U-19 bowlers and Nawaz hopes that he could provide some in the pipeline.
There are seven to eight fast bowlers in the squad so far. I believe there is little bit more provision which the selectors will have a look at where they can pick more. Its a very important part (as we play the world cup in South Africa), fast bowling is going to be a key aspect of our game plan. So back of mind I have that and looking to work with that.
And last but not the least, he believes his experience with Sri Lanka team will pay a rich dividend now.
I have done three World Cups with Sri Lanka, from 2010 till 2014. So I have idea of whats happening there. I can prepare the boys for the journey.
In the current Sri Lanka team which is playing against South Africa now there are four boys I believe who were under me in the U19-- Danushka Gunatilaka, Kusal Mendis, Niroshan Dickwella and Dhananjaya De Silva. They were in different batches from 2010 till 2014. But there have been many more players who played in the national team before.
