LAHORE, Jan 10: Inaugural Chief of Army Staff international squash tournament will be played from Jan 15-20 at Pakistan Sports Complex Islamabad with leading players of the country taking part in .

This was stated by Lt General Zarrar Azim, President, Punjab Squash Association at a news conference here Friday.

“It will be the first COAS tournament and some of the leading players of the world including world number 13, Karim Darwesh from Egypt have confirmed their participation” said Zarrar.

He said Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) had allocated PSA to organise this big event which would be another effort to further promote squash in Pakistan.

President PSA said players from most of squash playing countries are taking part in the six-day event and it would be a major squash activity in the beginning of this year.

Zarrar said Pakistan juniors have shown encouraging results in the just concluded British Junior Open by winning three titles.

He said the Punjab squash academy would soon be established with addition of some facilities at the existing PSA complex.

“The construction work on the in-complete international squash complex near Gadaffi stadium would also be soon started as hectic efforts are underway to complete this project”, he said.

Karamat Ullah Chaudhary, tournament director said the event offers a total cash prizes of US$30,000 from which the winner will get US$ 4180 and the runners up US$ 2860.

Four home players Khayal Muhammad, Naveed Atlas, Yasir Butt and Farhan Mahboob have laready qualified for the main round.

Following are the top 12 rankings. Karim Darwesh (Egypt), Mansoor Zaman, (Pakistan), Omar Elborossy (Egypt), Shahid Zaman (Pakistan), Muhammad Abbas (Egypt), John Williams (Australia), Shahier Razik (Canada), Muhammad Essam Hafiz (Egypt), Muhammad Azal Iskandar (Malaysia), Farrukh Zaman, Ejaz Azmat, Zubair Ali Khan (Pakistan).—APP