'Draft' concept short-lived

Radical plans for a domestic player draft have received short shrift at a national talent identification forum in Sydney.

State talent managers, cricket operations staff and a range of CA figures including the team performance manager Pat Howard, the National Cricket Centre manager Belinda Clark and Alex Wyatt, who was appointed executive general manager strategy, government and people earlier this year, were all present for discussions at the SCG on Thursday evening.

They ran through numerous ideas for the earlier identification of young cricketers and the better spread of talent around the six states. Howard had spoken about the concept of a draft earlier this week, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that he was open to the idea as a way of ensuring the best players gained contract opportunities across the nation.

"We're not after all athletes but we want to make sure we keep the cricketers. I'm open to things like drafts," Howard had said. "We're going to throw a whole heap of things on the table."

However, ESPNcricinfo understands the draft option was "knocked on the head in the first 10 minutes" of the forum, largely because the current network of talent managers means that state players, their capability and likely opportunities, are now discussed far more openly than before, with a view to ensuring that the best 66 state players were taking part in domestic competitions.

The greater focus of the evening's discussions centred on measures to ensure that players were identified and granted opportunities at a younger age, as CA has warmed to the idea that they can no longer allow talented primary and high schoolers to drift towards AFL and other sports before reverting back to cricket in their later teenage years. The battle for talent must be fought more actively.

"You want to keep the pointy end at the top of the pyramid with the national team but you want to broaden the base underneath and create more opportunity," said one forum attendee.

To that end, some of the ideas thrown around in recent months, not only at Thursday's forum, have included the possible inclusion of a National Performance Squad team for talented younger players in the domestic second XI competition.

Other options, such as the inclusion of an extra NSW team in youth championships to reflect the size of the state's talent base, and the possibility of a combined Under-17 team playing in the Under-19 championship to better expose younger players to a higher standard of competition, have also been weighed up.

Fundamental to the discussions is the idea that CA and the states need to be more conscious of affording opportunities to players on a basis of skill as opposed to age.

The range of ideas suggested and the number of cricket figures involved in talks suggests a more holistic and consultative process than the introduction of the Futures League in 2009. That concept, which was designed to advance opportunities for young players, served to strip an enormous amount of experience from grade, second XI and state competitions.

No ideas or concepts were finalised at the forum, which was intended mainly as a primer for further talent identification discussions over the course of the 2014-15 season.