LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Friday announced the activities calendar of its National Cricket Academy for 2019-2020, which commences from June 17 with the training of the national U-16 squad which returned from Bangladesh recently.

The programme comprises four categories -- player skills and training, youth/talent hunt and skills training, game education programme, and players development at regional and high performance centres.

In the second phase, Pakistan U-19 team will attend the player skills and training programme from July 15 after returning from the tour of South Africa.

The skills programme is also designed for U-13 players.

In the last phase, a four-week emerging players fitness training camp will also be held in Lahore in June next year.

Commenting on the NCA activities calendar, PCB director academies Mudassar Nazar said: “A robust, well thought out and detailed year-long programme has been developed keeping in mind the strategic objective of the PCB which is to continue to invest and focus on our future cricket.

“Over the next 12 months, we will impart coaching and training with an aim to identify, prepare and develop the next generation of cricketers so that they are as best prepared as practically possible to carry forward the good work of past and present generation of Pakistan cricketers,” Mudassar added.

Following U-16 players have been invited for the first programme at NCA: Ahmed Khan (Abbottabad); Arham Nawab, Ali Asfand, Mohammad Waqas, Sameer Saqib (Faisalabad); Ali Hassan (Sialkot); Aliyan Mehmood, Kashif Ali (Karachi); Aseer Mughal, Amir Hassan (Rawalpindi); Farhad Khan, Ayaz Shah, Zubair Shinwari (Fata); Faisal Akram, Mohammad Shehzad (Multan); Haseebullah Khan, Khalid Khan (Quetta); Umer Eman, Muneeb Wasif (Lahore); Rizwan Mehmood (Hyderabad).

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2019