KARACHI, Nov 10: The Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) on Saturday named an eight-member Pakistan team for next month’s 7th World Youth Scrabble Championship to be played in Birmingham, UK from Dec 7 to 9.

This is the third time that the Pakistan youth team will be appearing in the world event. They first appeared in the 2010 edition in the Philippines where they even surprised the PSA by ending up eighth.

In 2011, in Malaysia, the team improved even further by bagging the fifth position, just ahead of the England team.

“Seeing them do so well at the international level, PSA, too, has shifted its focus to working at the grassroots,” said PSA’s Youth Programme director Tariq Pervez at a programme held to introduce the young players to the media at the Beach Luxury Hotel here.

“PSA has been actively promoting scrabble in Pakistan since 1989. It organises 10 tournaments annually, the most notable ones of which are the Pakistan Scrabble Championship and the inter-school championships.

“Every year we are getting bigger turnouts at our inter-school tournaments. The school events have always been our priority.

That’s how we found our current national champion Waseem Khatri,” he said pointing to the current youth team’s 22-year-old coach.

PSA’s 13th inter-school tournament held on Jan 22, 2012, had 450 participants making it the largest scrabble event ever in South Asia.

“This year we picked a group of 25 young players who performed well at the inter-school tournaments. These players were groomed and trained for several months by senior PSA members.

“We also invited Mrs Karen Richards, who is World Youth Scrabble Championship chairperson, and her son Alistair Richards, the number one player of Australia, to Pakistan to train our players,” the youth programme director said.

The eight players, namely, Arham Abidi, Inshal Shahbaz, Jahanzaib Khan, Javeria Mirza, Javeria Salman, Mariam Arif, Moizullah Baig and Salman will be accompanied by their coach Waseem Khatri and Tariq Pervez.

“We are feeling very confident about our team’s chances this year. It will be no surprise if the team finishes in the top three, if not higher,” Tariq announced.

But the association is facing some problems in getting sponsorship for these players.

“We have applied for visas for all the eight players but PSA is after all a non-profit organisation with limited funds. So we are looking for sponsorship for these players since we would not be able to bear the expense ourselves,” said the gentleman while explaining that the expense for each player (including visa fee, air ticket, accommodation, boarding, lodging, transportation, etc.) is approximately Rs180,000.