June 20, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 15, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 19: The Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has announced a 17-member juniors squad for the upcoming Junior Asia Cup men’s hockey tournament, scheduled to be played in Hyderabad, India from July 8-18.

President PHF Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali announced the names of the junior squad here at the Naseer Bunda Hockey stadium on Thursday and said the junior team had the capacity to win the important event.

“Pakistan will definitely qualify and would likely win the event,” said Jamali while talking to media after the final trials. “We have seen that the junior team has performed well on the recent South African tour which is an encouraging sign for the country,” he added.

Commenting on having the training camp set up in Islamabad, the former premier said that the city was experiencing normal temperatures which suited the players for training sessions.

Meanwhile, about his planned meeting with the prime minister over the recent PHF chaos regarding the secretary’s post, Jamali said: “I had a meeting with the prime minister who is also the patron-in-chief of the PHF, and he told me that being the head of the hockey federation, I should move as per the national interest and efforts should be made to improve the standard of the game.”

“I also spoke to the Federal Sports Minister, Najamuddin Khan on the phone and he said ‘you understand hockey more than me and the PHF secretary fiasco should be sorted out.”

Jamali denied that the PHF was under any pressure from any of the quarters. “I will have a meeting with both Asif Bajwa and Khalid Mahmood within the next three to four days and we will sit down and decide a better outcome to the problem.”

When reminded about the ordinary performance of the senior hockey team on the recent European tour, Jamali said: “Teams throughout the world are playing good level hockey but only that team wins which performs the best on a given day. We are stressing on the boys to play every match as a final and with do-or-die spirits.”

To a question regarding Pakistan’s expected show in this year’s Beijing Olympics, Jamali said the senior squad had the potential to get on the podium if they played to their full potential.

Meanwhile, in another interesting development, the recently ousted PHF Secretary Khalid Mahmood insisted that he was still the secretary of the federation. “I am still the PHF secretary and will follow president’s directives for a future course of action,” he said in a brief chat with Dawn.

Juniors squad: Imran Shah, Imran Butt, Kashif Ali, Imran Abbas, Mohammad Atiq, Mohammad Irfan, Khurram Shazad, Zaheer Ahmad, Fareed Ahmad, Aamir Shahzad, Adeel Hussain, Shafqat Rasool (captain), Mohammad Taufeeq, Nasim Khan (VC), Inayatullah, Mohammad Zubair, Mohammad Rizwan, Nasir Shahzad.

Stand byes: Mohammad Altaf, Mohammad Khaliq, Wasif Sidique, Mohammad Imran. Officials: Jahangir Butt, Danish Kaleem, Kamran Ashraf, Mohammad Akhtar, Irshad Ali.