Champaka: Bangladesh U-18 pacers have got the potential

In order to find out talents in the junior level, a 10-day long pace bowlers’ camp involving the U-18 cricketers started under the supervision of BCB High Performance pace bowling coach Champaka Ramanayake at Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Dhaka Saturday. Former Sri Lanka pacer Champaka explaining his intention in the camp said, “This is the camp actually for the youngsters. They are U-18s. They are eligible for the next U-19 World Cup. So I thought of taking them for a 10-day camp. I did the early two camps and my idea is to find out the talent from here at junior level. So, I take up the U-19 as the future talent. It’s identification for me and development for the youngsters. “They are all very raw and young. They have got the potential. They are now kids, who have to work hard and continuously work that can get them better,” he added.

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Champaka said the time is right to groom these young pacers for the future. “They are young and this is the right base. This is the time to really rectify the problems they had. They are all raw. They have some issues here and there. We’ve showed them, there are some issues here. They’re doing some technical sides. We’ve video sessions, we had analysed them. They are keen to change. It’s not a big change. To be more efficient you need to have that,” Champaka explained. “We’re going to do a lot of fitness works. We’re going to start a lot of fitness training because there are a lot of pacers at this moment, especially the HP guys. Along with HP boys, (Bangladesh) ‘A’ team boys are playing at this moment. We’ve seen domestic competition where there was serious fitness problem,” the former Lankan right-arm pacer added.