KARACHI: Newly-appointed Pakistan Twenty20 skipper Shahid Afridi inaugurated the HBL Inter-school Cricket Tournament in a colourful ceremony here at Karachi Gymkhana on Thursday.

More than 500 students from the participating schools were present with their placards at the inauguration ceremony which was also attended by Test cricketers Younis Khan, Asad Shafiq and former cricketers Jalaluddin and Abdul Raquib.

Aman Aziz Siddiqui, Head of Strategy & Investment, HBL, announced that his bank will be making the Inter-School Tournament a national event with the collaboration of the Pakistan Veterans Cricket Association (PVCA).

PVCA chairman Fawad Ijaz Khan welcomed the initiative of HBL and looked forward to making the Inter-School competition a nationwide annual event. He mentioned that it’s for the seventh time the PVCA is organising an inter-school event in Karachi.

Thirty-two teams, including a couple of them selected by HBL on the basis of open trials, have entered the HBL Inter-School Cricket Tournament being organised by the PVCA.

A total of 55 matches will be played over a period of nearly two and a half months. After the league matches, the leaders of all the eight groups will qualify for the knockout stage, starting with the quarter-finals.

The final will be played at Karachi Gymkhana on Nov 27.

The players born on or after Sept 1, 1997 will be eligible to take part in the tournament and only those teams/players approved by the PVCA will be allowed to take the field. All the matches will be 40-overs-a-side contests.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2014