Not the Contract, the Net Session: How Franchise Squads Are Actually Built

It is seven minutes past seven in the morning. The grass on the side nets at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur is still wet. A left-arm seamer is bowling the seventh over of his spell. There is no batter in front of him, only a cross drawn on the pitch in white chalk. Before releasing the ball he pauses, thinks twice about his right-foot landing, then lets it go. The coach standing behind him draws a mark on his clipboard.

That day I counted — across the whole session, thirty-six deliveries were bowled without a batter. Twenty of them had the same target: eight inches outside off stump. Four balls were deliberately thrown into the ground, purely to measure the impact on the landing foot. At one point the throwdown specialist walked over and said, 'Elbow a touch higher.' The next three balls landed exactly there.

The transfer window is open. Agents' phones are busy, name lists on social media change colour every day, and retention rumours that existed in the morning are gone by evening. But the man bowling that seventh over in the nets does not appear on any list today.

From my years of watching cricket matches and training sessions, one thing keeps surfacing — franchise teams are built at the auction, but teams are won in the nets. The paper says one thing; the net says another.

The first question is where the money goes

The Bangladesh Premier League began in 2026. Since then it has produced not only cricketers but a full cricket economy — retentions, direct signings, the draft, the foreign quota, NOCs, and persistent complaints about delayed payments. Inside all of this, one thing stays constant: every franchise has limited money and unlimited ambition.

The real question of a transfer window is never 'who is coming'. The real questions are two. First, what percentage of the wage bill is locked up behind two or three names; second, how many 'invisible' players can be bought with the rest. Across franchise cricket history, far more teams have lost titles through a lack of depth than through a lack of big names.

There is a simple truth about the foreign quota that nobody writes down — a good overseas seamer does not only bowl his own four overs. He puts the stumps down in front of the local young quick in the adjacent net. The coach who makes that rising bowler hit 'pointed at the body' five or six times every session also takes five or six wickets through him in matches, indirectly.

Franchise boards now face broadly the same problem: the league calendar overlaps with overseas leagues. So excitement over 'who is coming' matters less than planning for 'who will still be here in the last three matches'. A franchise that buys only stars wins the ticket sales; a franchise that buys depth wins the points table.

The sixth bowling option: where the budget leaks

I have seen many times that a franchise's top four bowlers stay settled while the fifth and sixth options do not. When the match rolls into the 14th over, the first two seamers' spells are done, one spinner has had a bad day — and that is where the sixth bowler arrives, usually a batting all-rounder conceding at 8.5 an over.

This sixth bowler gets the fewest balls in practice and yet carries the heaviest burden in the match. This is the biggest inconsistency I have observed. In one session I counted: each of the main four bowlers delivered sixteen to twenty balls; the sixth option delivered eight. Then in a match he has to bowl two overs for 23.

The theory is easy. When the squad is built, the sixth bowler is bought as 'extra'. In practice, he is extra. But the arithmetic of a match is this — you cannot complete twenty overs with four bowlers unless someone produces a four-wicket spell. So the sixth option is not a luxury; it is an obligation.

At Croatia, during those sessions at the Russia World Cup, I watched the football version of the same principle. Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic dropped back to cover the full-backs — that was not extra work, it was the structural core of the system. In cricket the sixth bowler plays exactly that role. The crowd sees an 'all-rounder'; the coach sees a safety valve.

The middle order's silent twenty runs

Highlights show the opener's 56 off 27. They do not show the No. 7's 20 off 15 that lifted the side from 120 to 145. Yet franchise cricket results turn on exactly those twenty runs.

I have sat with several seasons of scorecards and found that among the last four teams in a league, the two that reached the semi-finals had batting depth down to No. 8. The two that missed out ran out of trust after No. 6. There was no great difference in individual strike rates between those sides; the difference was the presence of Nos. 7 and 8.

During squad building nobody treats these Nos. 7 and 8 as 'names', yet those two men decide the team's fate the following season. At the training ground I have seen a fixed convention: there is no specific drill for the middle order. There is only 'situational batting'. Ten balls left, twenty-five needed — the players who rehearse that three times a week do not have shaky hands in matches.

This is where franchise cricket wastes the most. On a budget of twenty crore, the No. 8 batter gets twenty lakh — and that twenty-lakh man settles the outcome in the last three balls.

Fielding: the runs that show as zero on the scorecard

I have a habit — during a match I always watch one different fielder. Usually the man near the boundary in the third ring. The one who did not sprint for four overs straight, but saved two runs with one stop, and then denied the batter a single on the very next ball.

The broadcast camera goes to that fielder twice and to the batter forty times. I have tracked that imbalance for years. When you do the arithmetic, a well-drilled fielding side saves roughly fifteen to twenty runs in a franchise match. Those runs decide precisely the matches lost or won by twenty runs.

Every franchise builds its own defence, but offers the biggest discount when hiring a fielding coach. That discount returns the following season as the most expensive mistake. When two of a team's seamers get injured and the bowling strength drops thirty percent, fielding and workload management suddenly carry equal weight.

When I completed eighty-four sessions with Sheikh Russel KC, those small tasks became my main subject. In those two and a half months I learned that the football session which builds a team also builds a cricket fielding rotation. My series 'The Fourth Stand' did not mention those sessions, but they changed how I read cricket. What I learned from eighty-four football sessions, I transferred to cricket — and it paid off in the Croatia World Cup series. There I wrote about 720 minutes, how long Modric was on the pitch and how he filled the gaps left by covering roles and cover drives.

Left-hand, right-hand: the equation boardrooms miss

Everyone talks about the left-hand, right-hand combination, but no specific time is allotted in practice to prepare it. I have noticed something — when two left-handers are at the crease, bowlers can attack one end with confidence and keep their lines intact. These small imbalances change the tempo of a franchise match.

In the boardroom this is just a word: 'combination'. In the nets it becomes rotation, strike-sharing, and a method to lock a particular bowler into a particular over. A team that budgets separate time for rehearsing this usually has a stable win rate the following season.

My wrong assumption, and the one many still hold

For a long time I believed a big-name finisher was a side's greatest addition. I am now certain that batting depth actually comes from small 'role players': the man who bats at seven and is the twelfth bowler, who returns 5-0-28 and stands at the boundary to save one run off the last ball. These players never make highlights, but without their contribution the big names produce nothing.

I understood this most clearly during the 2026 shutdown, when many were off the field, training grounds were closed, and yet some players kept their physical capacity intact.

What coaches do not say

I have an old habit — after a session I try to talk to the coach for fifteen minutes. At first I thought it was for the courtesy. Later I understood this is the real work. Because in the first fifteen minutes at a training ground you see which batter has changed his backlift, which seamer is testing a new seam position.

Those fifteen minutes have been my biggest education. Preserving context does not mean stuffing old history into a piece. Context belongs only when it changes how the present is read. Otherwise it should be cut.

The hidden ledger: a word and a contract

There is another small but large entry in franchise cricket — delayed payment. In Bangladesh the complaint is not new. As a result, many good players move to other leagues, because there the contract money arrives on time. Franchises do not factor this in, because delayed payment appears in no dataset — but the next year the gap has to be filled by spending beyond the budget.

A contract is not merely paperwork; it is a social commitment. Without that duty toward the player, the transfer market loses a trusted environment and also loses its own youth potential.

The core point: who survives is decided at the training ground

After the auction, who stays in the side for the last three matches is not decided in the boardroom. It is decided at seven in the morning, when some players are tending to their own arms. We often assume that once fitness returns everything will be as before. The reality is that the mental block of an injured player is harder to clear than the physical one.

So I place no bet on contract rumours. I count how many turned up in the morning, how many pushed through after the eighth ball, how many paused to correct a landing foot. That arithmetic appears in no contract, but it shows in the points table.

Closing

On each of the coming days I will try to be in my car by seven in the morning. For those of us who go to the training ground, that is the special part. We do not sit still here. Because I have seen that a fifteen-minute interview can end up running to twelve parts. So I say this: before a contract ends, a name can drop off a list — but the training ground never forgets a player.