England call for Derbyshire youngster

Warm congratulations today go to Derbyshire youngster Yousaf Bin Naeem, who has been selected for the England Young Lions Invitational squad to play Australia and Ireland this month.

He has only just turned seventeen (nine days ago) so has time on his side, but I have heard glowing reports about the young batter, as well as tall seamer Harry Moore, who is still only sixteen.

Their progress, success and hopeful eventual integration into the senior Derbyshire side is crucial to the credibility of the Derbyshire Pathway and the club. Excellent work is being done by Daryn Smit and his coaching team, but we need to see players progressing through to the senior ranks.

Far too often in recent years we have seen players progress so far, only to be discarded, some of them far too prematurely. Tom Taylor was written off by some yet has had a fine county career elsewhere, so too Callum Parkinson. Alfie Gleadall looked a talent but didn't come through, likewise Tom Knight, Ben Cotton and plenty of others. I thought Dan Redfern a really special player and loved watching that 2012 side with him and Ross Whiteley in it, but both departed the county far too soon.

Another local 'lad', Tom Wood, is nearly thirty, has had a hard battle to a county contract and now faces a challenge to retain it. For me, he should be given the next seven one-day cup matches and the four-day games to follow. Bat him at three in the shorter form, maybe five of six in the longer and see how he goes. He has two of the fastest one-day tons for the club, but needs to show he has more than that to offer on a regular basis. Certainly, if he is released we need to be able to say that he at least was given the opportunity.

Archie Harrison and Mitch Wagstaff are young players of talent, but with the second eleven fixtures stopped for the month of August, neither are playing more than club cricket. Can we judge them on that, however well they are doing? Harrison was starring at Repton, but doesn't appear to have had anywhere near the same amount of cricket this year, which is a concern for a lad who seems to be talented. Both are just 19 years old.

I expect the Derbyshire side of 2024 to be substantially different to this year's model, but it is important that a club getting over two million a year from the ECB, around £190k of which is for academy development, is seen to be developing and playing its own.

There is sure to be an element of short termism, bringing in experienced players to improve playing fortunes, as this year has been poor. We did that back in the 1980's, when the likes of John Hampshire, David Steele, Barry Wood and Steve Oldham were brought in from other counties and aided the development of Barnett, Morris, Adams, Tunnicliffe and Newman.

If the recruitment of streetwise pros can bring through the next generation of Derbyshire-reared talent, it works for me. Essex got hammered by Nottinghamshire today, but their side of largely kids were playing a Nottinghamshire side with Dane Paterson and Brett Hutton opening the bowling, Slater and Hameed in the batting ranks. If nothing else, it showed them what they had to do to progress. As well as showing what a huge staff Nottinghamshire have with a lot of players in the other competition...

Derbyshire have shown that they can still produce young gems (Slater, Blackwell, Whiteley, Critchley, Parkinson, Taylor) even if they go on to fame and fortune elsewhere. Maybe in the past they have not always been properly managed, which I would like to think has changed.

We can also give opportunity to those lacking it elsewhere. I watched Ben Martindale at Nottinghamshire today, a delightful player who gets little opportunity at a county where they buy the best talent elsewhere. He may well be the latest to shine at another club, as Joey Evison has done since moving to Kent. Certainly the talent is there in spades.

Derbyshire can recruit wisely from such ranks, as they have done with Reece, Guest, Dal and Aitchison. Good players all, needing only opportunity to shine

Continuing to identify such players, mixing them with the cream of locally-reared - and hopefully retained - talent and adding a soupçon of quality experience is the way that we can continue to mix it with the so-called big boys.

Who knows? Maybe punch above our weight in doing so...