LAHORE, Feb 19: Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) on Monday announced the names of 41 junior probables for a training camp from Feb 21 in Faisalabad for the series against Kenya and Egypt.

A spokesman of the PHF said that former olympian Jahangir Butt will be the manager and camp commandant and will be assisted by former Olympians Danish Kaleem and Kamran Ashraf.

Pakistan under-18 hockey team will tour Kenya and Egypt from March 23 to April 9 to play series against the host nations

In the first phase of their tour, Pakistan will tour Kenya to play four matches against junior team before travelling to Egypt to play same number of matches.

Pakistan’s tour to African countries is part of plan to prepare national junior team for 2009 Junior World Cup.

One-day trials to select an 18-member squad for the tour will be held in Faisalabad on Feb 28. The players will continue training in Faisalabad.

PHF had started preparing the junior team with talent hunt programme and 12-team competition in Lahore.

Apart from Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia, the PHF is also working to arrange senior team’s tour of Europe.

PHF has requested Germany, Netherlands, England and Spain to arrange some matches in June or July this year for Pakistan seniors. PHF is waiting for the response from these countries.

Probables:

(Lahore) Imran Butt, Muhammad Iqbal, Zeeshan Ali, Ali Mustafa, Shahzad Nasir, Muhammad Imran, Fareed Ahmad, Hassan Akhtar, Rana A Rehman, Imran Malik and Shafqat Rasool. (Faisalabad) Khurram Majeed, Attique, Rana Akmal, Irfan, Adnan Javed, Muhammad Zaheer, Usman Tariq ,Shahzad Yasir, Inayat ullah and Naseer Naveed. (Karachi) Waqas, Fahad Afridi, Ziaul Haq, Rizwan Khan, Adeel Hussain, Azlan Khan and Haseem Khan. (Rawalpindi) Awais Khan, Aamir Shahzad and Atif. (Quetta) Wasif Siddique, Amin and Jamal Shah. (Bahawalpur) Muhammad Afzal, Umar Bhutta, Danish Shah and Khurram Shahzad. (NWFP) Shujaur Rehman and Noman Khan.—APP