Terry aims to re-energise High Performance unit

Paul Terry, the newly-appointed director of coaching at BCB's National Cricket Academy, has said his primary goal will be to make the High Performance unit, a so far successful but discontinued training programme for elite cricketers, a long-term agenda. Terry came to Dhaka last week to finalise his deal with the BCB and will be in charge of overall coaching at the academy.

"We are hoping that this [High Performance] is going to be a sustainable programme," Terry said. "It is here to stay. We need to get results from it with people eventually going on to play for Bangladesh. The idea is to give the young guys, possibly coming out of the Under-19s programme, a pathway to the next level. Our idea is to put a plan, structure and training programme to give them the opportunity to do that. If we do that, this will be very sustainable."

In a bid to rejig Bangladesh cricket's development programme, the BCB has decided to go back to forming the High Performance unit to fuel a players' pipeline to feed the senior team. The HP unit, set to begin in the first week of June with a head coach to be named sometime next week, is a training programme first established in 2004 under Richard McInnes. Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim, Shahriar Nafees and Mehrab Hossain Jr were in the first batch, but over the last decade the BCB has been unable to restart the programme.

The National Cricket Academy, a residential training camp, was formed and run in a separate building and training ground within the premises of the Shere Bangla National Stadium but it has been operational only during the off season with mainly the Under-23 players. The HP unit, under the NCA, will be divided into three parts. The first group will have a group of 22, mostly young cricketers who will train for four months, but it is likely that domestic performers who are older will be included in this group.

The second group will be fringe cricketers of the senior team who will be training around the year when they are not picked in a certain format or series. Here the coaches will work according to the instructions of the national team's coaching staff. Sarwar Imran will work with the pace bowlers, Wahidul Gani with the spinners and Zafrul Ehsan with the batsmen. A few local coaches and foreign specialist coaches will accompany them from time to time. The HP's overall goal would be to reduce the gap between the national players and the next batch.

The third group will be featuring 16-17 pace bowlers, including Mashrafe Mortaza and Taskin Ahmed, as well as domestic performers and raw talents like Nahid Hasan, who is currently in Bangladesh's Under-17 side but was also tried out for the Under-19s against South Africa in the recent Youth ODI series at home.

The Under-19s, however, will be taken out of the HP or academy programmes. They will now be permanently based at the BKSP in Savar.

Terry said he would work towards building relations with coaches and players, and not try a certain way of coaching that would be alien to cricket development in Bangladesh.

"It will be stupid of me to say we will do it the England or Australian way," he said. "My role is to build good relationships with the coaches and also the players. There's obviously a lot of very good things happening in Bangladesh cricket at the moment. So I would be stupid to say I will do it my way because my way may not necessarily work.

"I will be obviously blending in and know them very well. Hopefully the combination of different thoughts will improve Bangladesh cricket. A little similar to how the support staff is: a Sri Lankan head coach, a Zimbabwean bowler and English fielding coach plus Bangladeshi staff as well."