KARACHI: A total of 16 prominent teams of the city will vie for honours in the Omar Associates Trophy Floodlit Cricket Tournament which starts from Thursday night here at the Annu Bhai Park in Nazimabad.

Deputy mayor of Karachi, Arshad Vohra, will inaugurate the competition at 10:00pm, according to the organizers, while the opening fixture between Nazimabad Gymkhana and GMH CC shortly after the opening ceremony.

The competing teams have been divided into four pools with the top two sides from each group qualifying for knockout stage.

The winners will receive Rs400,000 whereas the runner-up would get Rs200,000. There are individual awards of Rs5,000 each for the best batsman, top bowler, man-of-the-final and for man-of-the-match in the semi-finals. The man-of-the-match in the group fixtures and the quarter-finals will be given Rs2,000 each.

Nadeem Omar, the managing director of Omar Associates, expressed the hope the tournament would provide exciting cricket in the coming days.

“I hope that the tournament will be played in a competitive manner and new players will emerge through it,” Nadeem said.”We’re providing the platform to the emerging players and hopefully some new talent will be unearthed who will go onto serve at the highest level.”

Meanwhile, participating teams have been advised to collect their draws from S.A. Fahim.

Following are the pools:

Group ‘A’: United Sports, Rangoonwala Group, Nazimabad Gymkhana ‘B’, Rehman Foundation.

Group ‘B’: K-Electric, Inverex, Mohammad Hussain CC, Shamil CC.

Group ‘C’: New Al-Habib, Nazimabad Gymkhana, Sabir Gymkhana, GMH CC.

Group ‘D’: Sojhla Academy (Dera Ghazi Khan), Qasmi Gymkhana, Alamgir Gymkhana, North Shire CC.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2017