KARACHI, March 17: Taking a sudden U-turn, the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has included discarded forward Azlan Khan for junior team’s forthcoming tours of Kenya and Egypt after he was axed on physical trainer’s report that he didn’t attend the morning sessions.

While chief selector Khalid Mahmood and team manager Jahangir Butt were not available for comments, selector Manzoorul Hassan said half-back Ali Mustafa “might” have been axed from the squad for submitting forged documents.

However, he was unaware whether Ali had really been dropped and who had replaced him for the tours.

“When we selected the squad I was told by chief selector Khalid Mahmood that Ali Mustafa seems to have forged his identification documents. He was later included in the squad on the condition that he will be axed if his documents are found as fake. I think it must be him who has been dropped. But I am not sure and don’t know as to who has replaced Ali if he has been excluded on these grounds,” Manzoor told Dawn on Saturday.

Asked if there were any doubts why was Ali included in the squad at all, he said the player was selected on the basis of his documents but there were doubts that he might have changed his name.

Manzoor said as Azlan was a standbye, he might have been included since team management had the authority to replace any team player with someone from pool of reserves.

After the junior team selection on Feb 28, Khalid was adamant that there were no over-aged players in the under-18 squad and thorough scrutiny had been done to ensure that. He had totally refused to admit that team had at least four over-aged players – Shafqat Rasool, Atiqur Rahman, Amir Shahzad and Atif Yaqoob.

Azlan, who is also a penalty corner striker, was sidelined in a bizarre fashion by the selection committee when it decided against considering the youngster for the tours on physical trainer Irshad Haider’s report which was contradicted by the player.

The selectors considered trainer’s report as credible and never consulted the manager Jahangir Butt or coaches Kamran Ashraf and Danish Kaleem before announcing their decision against Azlan.

The whole episode took place in the presence of PHF secretary Akhtarul Islam who is also the co-opted member of the selection committee having Khalid as chief selector and Manzoor and Samiullah selectors.