July 12, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 11, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

KARACHI, July 11: The 42 Pakistan senior camp probables had their first session here at Steel Mills except Sohail Abbas, Waseem Ahmad and coach Tahir Zaman on Friday.

The trainees, who came after ‘specialized physical training’ at Army School of Mountain Warfare in Abbottabad, started training under the supervision of assistant coach Shahid Ali.

The newly-appointed team manager Abdul Rashid Jr has also joined the camp while Tahir is expected to report within a week.

Sohail and Waseem, who face an inquiry by the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) after leaving country to play in professional league in Germany without permission, are still abroad.

Tahir would join the camp within a week after a thorough medical check-up in Lahore and has been suffering from gastric problem and not cardiac arrest.

“I was playing while I started suffering from gastric problem. And I am in Lahore to have a complete medical check-up. I will be in Karachi within a week,” Tahir said from Lahore.

It has been reported that Tahir had a cardiac arrest and is hospitalized.

“There is no such thing. There is no heart problem and I am perfectly all right,” the coach said.

Earlier, team manager Col Shahid Jaffery died after cardiac problem during a camp set up in Lahore for tour to Australia earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Rashid refrained from speaking about probables, saying “I still can’t say anything about them as I hardly know any of the players.”

The camp has been set up to prepare and finalize the squad for the Champions Trophy in Amstelveen, the Netherlands next month.