ISLAMABAD, Oct 16: The continental squash body, the ASF has confirmed that next year’s Asian Junior Championship will be staged here.

The confirmation came following a recent meeting of the ASF held in Busan, the South Korean city that hosted the 14th Asian Games this month.

The decision has now been conveyed to the Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) which had bid for the championship at the Annual General Meeting of the ASF in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year.

The event was originally allotted to Jordan which never confirmed to the ASF their plans of staging it.

Secretary of PSF, Wing Commander Sajid Waheed told Dawn that the championship has been slated for the second week of February and will take place at Pakistan Sports Complex.

As many as 13 countries including Malaysia, India, Qatar, Kuwait and Singapore will compete in the championship that will feature individual and team events, both for men and women.

Meanwhile Khalid Atlas and Shahnawaz have been named to represent Pakistan at this December’s World Junior Championship in Chennai, India.

The two players who finished sixth and seventh respectively in the Masters League organised by the PSF will join four others — Khayal Muhammad, Arshad Iqbal Burki, Majid Khan and Safeer Khan — who were chosen last week for the team event. Saeed Hasan has been selected as a reserve player.

The championship is due to run between December 3 and 14 with the team event starting from the 10th.

In another development, the inaugural $25,000 Chief of the Army Staff International Championship (COAS) that was to be held from December 20 to 28 either in Rawalpindi or Islamabad, has been postponed till January.

The Professional Squash Association (PSA) felt that since the December dates were too close to Christmas, there were chances that foreign players may choose to stay away.

The tournament has now been set for the second week of January.