LAHORE: Just one day after being named as chief selector by the Pakistan Hockey Federation, Asif Bajwa on Wednesday announced 39 probables to attend a training camp for the national team’s forthcoming Olympic qualifying round.

The camp starts in Islamabad on Friday. At the Olympic qualifying event, three-time Olympic winners Pakistan are placed in pool ‘A’ alongside England, Malaysia and China while pool ‘B’ comprises Germany, New Zealand, Canada and Chile.

The qualifying event which will be staged in Muscat during January, originally was to be held in Lahore but the FIH pulled back the hosting rights from the PHF, raising objections over poor relations between the federation and its government.

Interestingly, though the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) had disaffiliated the PHF as its member but it made available its Naseer Bunda Stadium for the camp despite the fact that both the organisations were at loggerheads with each other before the FIH took the decision of shifting the Olympic qualifiers.

The probables will report to Shahbaz Senior, the manager of the camp.

Valencia will host the other component of the final 2024 Olympic qualifiers which were split into two. The Valencia event also features eight teams and will be staged in January. Austria, Belgium, Egypt, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Ukraine, divided into two pools, will be competing in the Spanish city.

After the round-robin stage the top two teams of the events in Muscat and Valencia advance to the semi-finals. The top three teams of each tournament qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Probables:

Goalkeepers: Akmal Hussain, Abdullah Ishtiaq Khan,Waqar, Bilal Khan, Muneeb-ur-Rehman.

Defenders: Mohammad Abdullah, Bilal Aslam, Mateen Ahmad, Sameen Ahmad, Rizwan Ali

Midfielders: Babar Saadat, Usama Bashir, Abubakar Mahmood, Moeen Shakeel, Hammad Anjum, Tazeem-ulHasan, Adeel Latif, Junaid Manzoor, Faheem Khan, Nadeem Razzaq

Forwards: Rana Abdul Wahid, Afraz, Roman, Waqar Ali, M Umar Bhutta, Umair Sattar, Ahmad Nadeem, Ihsan Elahi, Ahmad Raza, Salman Razzaq, Samiullah, Abdul Qadir, Haris Sarwar, Arslan Haider, Nouman Khan, Usman Ali, Ali Hashir, Ijaz Ahmad, Shairoz Khan

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2023