January 23, 2008	Wednesday	Muharram 13, 1429

LAHORE, Jan 22: A joint meeting of the national senior and junior selection committees on Tuesday discussed in detail the selection of five teams for the forthcoming Pentangular Cup cricket tournament to be held in different cities of Pakistan from Feb 10 onwards.

According to a PCB spokesman, all the five teams, comprising 15 players each, would hopefully be finalised on Wednesday. There will be a team representing each province along with one from the Federal Area and the PCB will be appointing captains for each of them.

Besides comprising national team players, the teams will also include the best performers of the regional and departmental teams in the Quaid-i-Azam Trophy and Under-19 competitions.

The Sindh team will have players from Karachi and Hyderabad. Meanwhile players from Multan will be included in the Balochistan side as it is hard to form a strong team for that province keeping in mind the dearth of talented players there. The Punjab team will be picked from Lahore, Faisalabad and Sialkot. Peshawar and Abbottabad regions will form the NWFP squad, while players from Islamabad and Rawalpindi will feature in the Federal Area’s team.

It is learned that almost all Pakistani players would be playing some matches of the event in order to fulfil one of the conditions in the central contract, which binds them to play at least four to five matches of the premier domestic cricket season every year.

Speedsters Shoaib Akhtar and Umar Gul also have to prove their match-fitness by playing in these matches.