Nafees's Formula: Successful Batters Cannot Be Found, They Must Be Built

Last month, standing by the nets at an academy in Dhaka, I noticed something that has been circling in my head ever since. Two nets side by side, two teenagers. In one net, a boy is bowling at 135 kilometres per hour — his run-up rhythm, his landing-foot position, the rotation of his shoulders, all of it clear enough to record in a coach's notebook. In the other net, a sixteen-year-old batter keeps making the same mistake: the front foot is not going first, so the ball keeps catching the edge and running away square. The coach stops him and says, "Weight forward, then the shot." The boy nods, brings the bat down again, makes the same mistake again. Ten yards separate the two nets, but the depth of the two problems is worlds apart.

That scene captures the least-discussed truth in Bangladesh cricket: you can spot pace at a glance, but batting cannot be spotted — batting has to be built. What Shahriar Nafees, head of cricket operations at the BCB, said at yesterday's press conference is really an explanation of this same truth. In his words, finding a bowler is easy, because pace is a visible, physical quality; but batting is a long process, where years of run-scoring habit have to accumulate. The training ground writes the first beat of every match — and this press conference was talking about the ground, not the scoreboard.

Last month the BCB launched its 'Bowler Hunt' programme across nine venues nationwide. That nine-venue spread is tactically significant. For years, Bangladesh's talent search was largely Dhaka-centric — where the domestic infrastructure, the coaches and the visibility are strongest. Spreading across nine venues means the BCB understands that pace is a scarce resource, and scarce resources never gather in one place. This is a search for talent and, at the same time, an attempt to break a geographical bias.

We all know Bangladesh's structural weakness. At home we are strong in spin, but away we are limited in pace. Which weapon actually decides a Test or an ODI? Mostly pace. So pace-hunting is a necessity for Bangladesh. At the press conference Nafees drew a comparison with Imran Khan's Pakistan and the Caribbean pace battery — the two most famous pace-production models in history. The comparison is ambitious, and there is a warning hidden in it too: the pace heritage of Imran Khan's Pakistan or the West Indies was not born from one or two scouting events; it was built over years, inside a culture.

At the centre of Nafees's argument lies a concept of uneven development, which struck me as the most important observation. He was saying that with a bowler, we can recognise that there is pace in him — because pace is an instant, visible, physical signal. But with a batter, there is no such visible signal. Batting means thousands of balls, countless innings, accumulated experience of scoring runs on different pitches, in different situations. In simple terms, pace is a born gift, while batting is an acquired habit.

Here a memory from football serves me well. I followed the cones from Bengaluru to Russia 2026, and there I saw how Europe's big academies build a young player along a ten-year path — technique, decision-making, the ability to handle pressure, all of it step by step. In football nobody says, "We will find a Messi." They say, "We will build a Messi over ten years." In cricket, pace bowling is almost the opposite — raw pace is a big part of it, and it can be identified relatively quickly. Nafees has essentially stated football's batting truth in cricket's language.

Nafees referred to an incident — a bowler who was observed from side-on and later succeeded at the international level. The story is fascinating, but there is a gap here too: the specific player was not named, so the incident is hard to verify independently. Still, the thread of the argument is clear — raw pace can be fast-tracked to the international level if the right guidance exists. And this is where the crucial distinction arrives, the one that usually gets lost: identifying talent and developing talent are not the same thing. The first is a search, the second a multi-year construction. What the BCB is doing now is the first. The question is who will do the second, and how.

Nafees himself offered an indicator for that question. He said the measure of success will be whether shortlisted players are getting opportunities to play domestic cricket. That metric is remarkably honest and measurable. A talent-identification programme can produce a list, but the journey from list to team happens in the middle of domestic cricket. Here I want to add something from my own experience. During my days in Bengaluru, I saw that many teenage bowlers with talent were lost — because they did not get enough overs in domestic matches. A pace bowler's development needs regular bowling. You can teach a teenager to bowl at 135 kph, but you cannot teach him to handle match pressure unless he is played regularly. Empty stadiums taught me that rhythm is a kind of memory; and a bowler's rhythm is built by counting overs in matches, not in practice.

One subject was almost absent from the language of the press conference — the question of the batting pipeline. The BCB has launched a 'Bowler Hunt', but there is no parallel 'Batter Hunt'. By Nafees's logic this is reasonable — batting is not something to be found, but built. Yet the same logic also legitimises a resource-allocation decision. A search that is for bowlers, while batting is left to the domestic structure — this imbalance can create another kind of shortage in the long term. Unless the domestic structure itself is strong enough for batting development.

The second pitfall is inflated expectation. Invoking Imran Khan and the West Indies means setting a very high benchmark. The reality is that a national scouting programme will reach that benchmark in a few years — believing otherwise is pure over-optimism. When the public hears the comparison, they will expect quick results; and if results do not come, disappointment will follow. Expectation management here is as important as strategy.

A third subject was completely absent from the press conference — the question of injury risk for teenage pace bowlers. Fast-tracking raw pace carries a heavy price: stress fractures, side strains, and shoulder pain. The bones and muscles of a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old bowler are not yet fully mature. If his workload is not managed, the joy of talent-hunting can turn into the pain of injury within a few years. Demanding that a young player "prove himself" on debut is cruel; it adds psychological pressure that raises the risk of re-injury. Nobody mentioned this risk at the press conference.

There is a positive side too, which I want to note separately — the inclusion of girls. Alongside the boys, girls were also called to this programme. This inclusion is strategically wise as well. Because the global market for women's cricket is growing fast, and Bangladesh's women's team is already competitive at the international level. Opening a path to producing women's pacers means activating a completely new pool.

I see this press conference as a deep strategic signal that is easy to miss. The BCB is really seeking an answer to a question: after talent is found, what happens? Nafees's answer is honest — domestic opportunity. The question now is who will arrange that domestic opportunity, and how soon. The real value of this programme lies not in the search, but in the step after it.

The most important signal for me over the coming months is whether those shortlisted teenage bowlers are getting regular overs in domestic matches. If they are, this programme will genuinely birth a pipeline. If they are not, we will see the old story again — a bright list that gathers dust and fades within a few years. You can find pace, but a pace bowler has to be built; and a batter has to be built too. Speaking about batting, Nafees has actually stated bowling's hardest truth — finding and building are never the same.