KARACHI: The Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) on Tuesday named the national team for the ninth World Youth Scrabble Championship (WYSC) to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from Aug 29 to 31.

“The team was selected after a gruelling selection process lasting months. It is completely transparent and the only criterion is merit,” said programme director Tarqi Pervez during a press conference at the Beach Luxury Hotel.

“We selected a group of 40 youngsters based on their performance at our annual inter-school championship held in February. These players were then trained by seasoned players for several months. The final team was selected through a multi-stage qualifying tournament,” he added.

“No other country has such a tough selection process. This is one of the reasons why Pakistan has performed so well at the youth level.”

Pakistan’s performance at the last WYSC was record-breaking; apart from the winner, the runner-up was also from Pakistan. In fact, eight players from Pakistan finished in the top 20 out of 136 players, which is the best performance by any country in the WYSC history.

“The PSA is proud to say that all this success was achieved without any government support. We have never received any financial help from the government. We have had difficulties too; some of our best players failed to accompany the team due to lack of resources,” the programme director stated.

But just before the team leaves this time, the PSA was lucky to have found support from a sponsor, M/S Shangrila Food (Pvt) Ltd, who have agreed to support the Pakistan team.

Pakistan is the defending champion of WYSC having won the 2013 edition staged in Dubai. Moizullah Baig is the reigning world youth champion and a favourite to retain the title this year.

The team leaves on Wednesday and will participate in the Sri Lanka Open International Championship on Aug 22-24 before featuring in the WYSC.

Squad:

Moizullah Baig, Arham Abidi, Ahmad Abdullah Abbasi, Bisma Fatima, Mariam Arif, Hassan Hadi Khan, Hammad Hadi Khan, Hasham Hadi Khan, Absar Mustajab, Talha Arif, Hiba Saad, Abbas Shabbir, Mohammad Affan.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2014