RIGHT now in Chennai, 12 of Australia’s best young players are training at India’s famous MRF Pace Academy.

Ten of them are a part of the National Performance Squad, with New South Wales youngsters Jason Sangha and Param Uppal the other two.

There’s Big Bash League final man-of-the-match Jake Weatherald and Under-19 World Cup hero Lloyd Pope. Five of Pope’s U19 WC teammates are also there, as are Cameron Green and Joshua Phillipe who are already capped in the Sheffield Shield.

Then there’s Chad Sammut, a 19-year-old quick yet to represent Australia at any of the junior levels who took one wicket across seven first grade matches in the summer. You may not have heard about him but there is plenty of excitement around the speedster.

On Sydney’s grade circuit, Sammut’s name took plenty — including the man himself — by surprise when Cricket New South Wales named its rookie list for 2018.

“I literally went speechless for two minutes after David Moore (CNSW’s general manager of cricket performance) called me to say I’d got a rookie contract,” Sammut told foxsports.com.au.

“I nearly broke down in tears because it’s been my lifelong dream to play cricket.”

Three days later his name came up among the 10 in the 2018 National Performance Squad. His grade returns may have been modest, but he had that special something that makes talent spotters sit up and notice. He had raw and unbridled pace.

“He’s got a real physical presence,” CNSW chairman of selectors and talent manager David Freedman told foxsports.com.au. “There aren’t many young left-arm bowlers who have express pace and Chad certainly has the ball speed and the ability to generate bounce and get life out of unresponsive pitches.”

YOUNG GUNS IN FOCUS

To Freedman’s naked eye Sammut bowls roughly 140km/h. As you would expect of a man who has seen Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood come through the system, his eye is good.

Last summer Cricket Australia trialled TrackMan at the National Championships. For a while now CA has been using TrackMan- ball tracking technology that has long been used in golf — to monitor the revs a spinner puts on the ball. This time around it was testing out a more heavy-duty model that also tracked pace.

“I was sitting there talking to the operator and he’s gone ‘he’s just hit 140ks,’ National Performance Program and NPS head coach Troy Cooley recalled of the first time Sammut caught his eye. “What I see out in the middle is this bloke running in with a big solid frame — a little bit bigger than it should be for a fast bowler — bowling left-arm pace at serious speed.

“Pace isn’t everything but if you’re looking for fast bowlers in the pile, when they hit those sorts of speeds in game it’s definitely a good tick in their box. You can’t buy it off the top shelf — pace.

“It’s not that often that you see kids coming through with that high velocity and a reasonable action.”

But make no mistake, both CNSW and CA recognise that Sammut is very much a work in progress.

“There’s a whole lot of improvement in him … we’ve only scratched the surface,” Freedman said.

The primary concern both CNSW and Cooley had for Sammut was his physical fitness. While he could hit 140km/h he could not sustain it, with the rapid pace that was so evident early in his spells noticeable for its absence later in games. The main aim for Sammut this winter with the NPS is to make the step-up from being a bowler with great pace to one who produces it consistently.

“He showed enough attributes to put a fast bowling coach on notice but while the first two overs were good the rest were under par,” explained Cooley. “The fitness to underpin that arm, the engine that was running it ran out of petrol. He needs to invest in some fitness to be able to use that arm speed for a lot longer.”

You can put that lack of fitness down to a few things. Unlike most of the rookies before him he had had little involvement in the state’s under-age system. Up until the under-19 stage he was unselected by CNSW so it’s only recently that he stepped into a professional cricket environment.

There are not too many who have burst onto the junior cricket scene like this and his emergence has happened so suddenly because the pace that has everyone so excited is only a recent addition to his arsenal.

“I wasn’t someone who was known as quick for his age,” he said. “I was just a standard kind of bowler”

“He was on the fringe of those under-age teams,” Freedman said. “We saw a bit of him through the school system with Westfields Sports High School and in the lower grades for Fairfield-Liverpool.

“He didn’t really catch the eye because he hadn’t had the growth spurt and wasn’t hitting those speeds. He was a player who was in the system without really dominating. At that stage we did not see the upside.

“Once he had that growth spurt around 16 and put on a bit of bulk that correlated to some extra pace, and there were improvements in the technical space too. That’s when we took notice and got him involved in our under-19 program.”

Sammut puts his new-found pace down to more than just a growth spurt. Although he has only recently got his foot in the door with CNSW, all his life he has dreamt of being a cricketer. Two years ago missing out on selection for CNSW’s pathway program both hurt and motivated him.

“I was really quite upset about it,” Sammut said. “It’s something I always wanted to do.”

He decided to do something about it, turning to former grade teammate Grant Lambert for coaching. He spent the off-season with him changing his bowling action and with that change of action came the pace.

A year later he was in CNSW’s Under 19s squad and progressed from fifth to first grade. He averaged 16.40 with the ball across two third-grade fixtures in 2016-17 and 22.75 across seven matches with the twos. His first stint in first grade was not kind; he took six wickets at 51.33 and last summer things were worse (one wicket at 201.00). But both Cooley and Freedman insist there is more to him than the raw numbers.

“He hasn’t taken that big step yet in terms of performances to be honest,” Freedman said. “He’s only really scratched the surface. But without putting the numbers on the board you can tell there is something there we can work with.

“That’s the concept behind a rookie contract — you can look beyond the numbers. You’ve got an opportunity to go on a bit of a gut feel off some of the attributes of the player … you look for the projected improvement.

“You like to think getting them involved in the professional environment, the rate of improvement can be really quick, that over the next couple of years the actual performances will justify the decision.”

So far it looks a smart bet. At the NPS Sammut’s fitness has improved leaps and bounds, and they are confident combining that increased bowling capacity with better game awareness will see him produce the numbers they believe he is capable of.

“Without being exposed to what it takes to be a professional fast bowler, he was a little bit underdone,” Cooley said. “His fitness levels have jumped into nearly what we’d expect of someone who has been in the (underage) system. He’s jumped a pretty big hurdle upfront there.”

He’s got a few more hurdles to go before he’s a fully-fledged professional cricketer but that’s something Cooley, Freedman and Sammut. They’re in no rush.

“We can only wait and see how long it takes. I take every day as a building brick. I’ve got to keep building up and when it’s my time it’s my time and I’ve got to grab it.”