PESHAWAR: The grand opening ceremony of the first ever FATA Super League Twenty20 Cricket will be held at Jamrud Tehsil, Khyber Agency on April 3.
This was stated by former first class cricketer and chief organiser of the FATA Super League Twdenty20 Cricket, Haji Taimur Afridi on Sunday. He said all arrangements in this connection have already been completed well in time. The Stadium has been given final touches and has beautifully decorated with colourful banners and balloons, he added.
He said after the successful final of the Pakistan Super League in Lahore, the initiative has been taken to have FATA Super League. He thanked MNA Al-haj Shahji Gul Afridi, League of the FATA Parliamentarians in National Assembly, for extending all financial and moral support. He said all the 24 teams have been divided into four different groups to be played at four different venues comprising South Waziristan Agency, Khurram Agency, Bajaur Agency and Khyber Agency.
The grand opening ceremony, he said, will be held on April 3 in the morning at Tehsil Jamrud, Khyber Agency while the final will be played on April 13 and South Waziristan Agency. There are attractive cash prizes for the winners and runners-up teams, he said, adding the winner will be awarded Rs. 0.6 million while the runners-up team will get Rs. 0.3 million.
He said the FATA Super League will give ample opportunities to the players of FATA to show their hidden talent. He said FATA has great talent of cricket as it won the PSB Grade-II National Cricket Championship in 1996 and 1997 for the first time wherein it is the current Twenty20 National Champion as well but due to lack of opportunities to the players the talented players could not reach to the national level.
Haji Taimur Afridi, who is looking after FATA cricketing affairs from the last two decades on his own basis with no sponsorship coming up. He lauded MNA Shahji Gul Afridi for taking a keen interest in sponsoring the event wherein lot of talented players would come up at national and international level through this FATA Super League.
The purpose of the FATA Super League is to promote the positive and peaceful image of FATA which badly suffered due to insurgency and militancy. The youth of FATA, he said, were traumatised and were mostly confined to their homes instead of participating in healthy sports activities.
He expressed the hope that the FATA Super League would bring more normality and peace to the area beside portraying a softer image of FATA to the rest of the world. Haji Taimur Afridi said that all the teams would be provided full uniform, DA and TA. He said leading cricketers like Salman Butt, Umar Amin, Muhammad Rizwan, Iftikhar and others add value to the event.
He disclosed that each team will field nine players from FATA with one is below Under-19 besides fielding two players from outside FATA.
