World Team Squash Championship: PSF announces four-member squad for Egypt

In sudden change of policy, federation selects players without conducting trials

KARACHI: While moving away from their policy of holding trials to select the final line-up for international events this year, the Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) finalised a four-member squad to travel to Cairo, Egypt for the World Squash Federation (WSF) Men’s World Team Squash Championship.

Before this move, the PSF had refused to budge from their previous policy of only selecting a squad for an international assignment after holding trials. This was more than apparent when back in 2013, Aamir Atlas Khan, the reigning Asian champion at the time, requested automatic selection for the Asian Championship as he was suffering from an injury and could not attend the trials. The federation refused to give him the leeway despite many pleading calls.

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However, this year the federation has opted to select the Professional Squash Association’s (PSA) top-ranked Pakistani players — Nasir Iqbal, Farhan Zaman, Danish Atlas and Tayyab Aslam — to represent Pakistan in the biennial event and PSF secretary Amir Nawaz has insisted that despite some seniors missing out on selection, the best players had been finalised.

“After an executive committee meeting, we decided to select the top four Pakistani players, according to the PSA rankings, for the event in Cairo,” Nawaz told The Express Tribune. “We know the quality of these players, having seen them perform well in recent PSA events, and their rankings solidify their position. We certainly conducted trials in previous events but we have changed that policy this year.”

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Pakistan are seeded 12th in the tournament, which they have previously won six times, and are placed in Pool A alongside top seed Egypt and USA.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st,  2015.

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