We need to make sure to catch the talented youngsters in the early stages. Many like Siraj, Saini, Yashaswi Jaiswal were all missed by the system and were fortunate enough to find some good samaritans. To me following should be the agendas:
1) Create a unified curriculum and training methodology for all academies across India
2) Create some incentives for IPL teams to invest more money and time into their regional academies such as they can buy their own academy players at auction for minimum base price. That will push them to go to rural areas and scout good players at young age.
3) Come up with proper diet plan for each region and publish them in bcci website so that everyone can read it for free. Desi diet though tasty is not exactly great for athletes.
4) Invest in training in more sports nutritionists, physios and conditioning experts. We still import most of the folks from outside the country and need to have more locals to work at grassroots.
5) Make sure all our bowlers gets trained in batting too. The kind of batting depth that England has is by proper planning, not by accident.
6) Bring in that genetic test which senior team done at junior level too so that deficiencies and strengths should be identified at junior level itself and players would be able to work on it.
Nice points, my observations are below
1) This has been on the agenda for some time but fear is that we will become like England with universal training. Our cricketers have the leeway to do the training that interests them as long as they are meeting the fitness criteria
For example: Dhoni plays all sports to keep himself fit, Kohli is more into cross fit where as Rahul is into mountaineering
2) IPL teams have already started doing it.
KKR has their academy in Bangalore which is operational throughout the year. KKR previously has sent some of his players to South Africa to train in high altitude conditions. Beneficiaries were Kuldeep, Yusuf Pathan, Manvinder Bisla, Piyush Chawla. Auction thing is very tricky though.
CSK are conducting age group tournaments for schools across Tamil Nadu and picking best players in the tournament to form a team which will travel abroad. Recently CSK junior team travelled to UK with Rayudu as their mentor. In this way, they are grooming coaches
Mumbai Indians have the best scouting program of all IPL teams. John Wright will watch most of the Limited overs domestic cricket. His scouting team includes Rahul Sanghvi, Robin Singh, Nilesh Kulkarni & kiran more
3) Diet plan is universal across all regions. Separate diet plans for particular individuals only happens at the higher levels of cricket. It will not be put up on website but all the players visiting NCA even junior cricketers get a handbook with plenty of required information in regional languages.
4) This point is true and worrying. Rahul dravid's suggestion is to encourage players who have not made it big to still be connected with the game by being involved in various capacities such as physio's, conditioning experts. Plans for NCA have been on hold since 2013 because of various issues. Original plan was to introduce a scientific research institute. Australia is way ahead of other countries in this regard
5) Well, this is because there are so many domestic teams that players don't need to have multiple skills to get into team. Even though, England has many counties. if players are identified they would be pulled out from the county cricket and are groomed in the England Lions tour. Stokes and Woakes were travelled with Lions for over 2 years. There is lot of uproar when domestic players are on India "a" tour when domestic season is on. If you notice, India "A" tours are planned when domestic cricket is not on. These "A" tours give only experience but not enough time to mold their skills
6) Rahul Dravid's philosophy is to let junior cricketers just play the game for the love of it and enjoy it for what it is. More on team building, work on skills and fitness will become a higher priority as they move to the next level
