KARACHI, Feb 28: Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) on Wednesday selected at least four over-aged players in the 18-member under-18 squad announced for tours of Kenya and Egypt after trials in Faisalabad.

Four players — Shafqat Rasool, Atiqur Rahman, Amir Shahzad, and Atif Yaqoob — are definitely over-aged since they have been appearing in junior national training camps for the last five or six years. With the exception of Atiq, who was first selected for national camp in 2002, team captain Shafqat, Amir and Atif all have been participating in Pakistan junior camps since 2001.

If one even considers that the quartet was 15 years of age when they first appeared in the national camp in 2001 or 2002, it surely makes them 20 or 21-year-old now.

The PHF is grooming the under-18 outfit for the Junior World Cup in 2009 and one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know how old these over-aged players will be after two years when the biggest junior hockey extravaganza is held.

However for chief selector Khalid Mahmood, the PHF squad doesn’t have a single over-aged player since all “measures” have been taken to confirm the age of the players.”

“I don’t think that any player is over-aged. Selector Manzoorul Hassan has personally verified all the registration forms of the players. Since the authentication has been done now, how we can say the players are over-aged,” Khalid told Dawn from Lahore.

When chief selector was reminded of rampant practices of forged national identity documents in the country, he came up with the most baffling argument and said: “So what, even fake US dollars can be printed these days.”

“You could be covering hockey for more than a decade and so you may have records of different players but PHF has no record at all. We have to depend on verification done by Manzoor,” replied Khalid, making the most surprising disclosure in the process.

The seasoned official said he didn’t believe in facial scrutiny as, according to him, it is virtually impossible to determine the age of any player through the process. “A 12-year-old belonging to downtrodden section of society can look like 20-year-old, while an 18-year-old from a well-off family can look like a 15-year-old. I don’t believe in facial scrutiny,” Khalid said. He, however, didn’t dwell upon as to why football’s world body FIFA does random wrist X-ray tests to determine players’ age in soccer.

Squad:

Goalkeepers: Imran Butt, Khurram Majeed.

Full-backs: Atique Rahman, Adnan Jawaid, Amir Shahzad.

Half-backs: Irfan, M. Zaheer, Farid, Zeeshan, Ali Mustafa.

Forwards: Adeel, Atif, Shafqat Rasool (captain) Haseem Khan (vice-captain), M. Imran, Inayat, Naseer Naveed, Shahzad Nasir.

Standbyes: Fahad Afridi, M. Iqbal, Wasif Siddiqui, Shujaur Rahman, Hassan Akhtar, Omar Bhutta, Azlan Khan, Danish, Jamal Shah, Shahbaz.