Noukhaz Zahid Khan will lead the 10-member Pakistan U16 team in a five-a-side international hockey tournament being played from April 4-7 in Singapore .
“It is a balanced combination which is capable of producing good results in the event to be participated by seven teams “,said former olympian, Tahir Zaman ,the camp commandant at a news conference to announce the team after supervising a training session here on Tuesday at national hockey stadium. Also present were coaches of team, Rehan Butt and Rana Zaheer.
The team members are (goalkeepers) Shahzad Hafeez and Rehman Khan. Noukhaz Zahid Malik (captain), Mohammad Atiq (vice captain), Musbashar Ali, Sikandar Mustafa, Junaid Kamal, Adeel Latif, Juniad Manzoor and Shan Arshad.
He said the team has two goal keepers because in five a side fast paced hockey goalkeepers are at injury risk and to avoid this factor the team management has decided to have two custodians.
“It will be our first ever participation in five a side hockey which is played on a shorter arena and we are quite confident that our team will live upto the expectations by finishing at the top “,he asserted.
The camp commandant said the Singapore event is the qualifying round for the next years U16 Youth Olympics to be held in China. The camp will continue till March 31 and the team will fly to Singapore on April first.
He said grooming of Pak Youth team is a part of future planning to make sure that by the time of year 2017 a strong junior team is fully prepared to take part in the Jr World Cup to be held in the same year.
“Never before in the history of Pakistan Hockey Federation such a long term planning was taken into consideration to train our junior team for the Jr World Cup,” he said adding “Now it is our responsibility to make sure that we make right progress in right direction by grooming talented players “.
Tahir Zaman said from Singapore tournament two teams will qualify for Youth Olympics and he is rating his side favourite to finish among the two.
” We are taking every measure to impart best possible modern training to our players who are very talented and they have shown remarkable improvement in the training “,he asserted.
He said Pak U16 represents the whole country as the trials were conducted throughout the country . “ We are keeping an eye on the future of Pak hockey that is why we are concentrating on junior teams training “.
To a question he said he will take the responsibility of teams success or failure as he is supervising the entire process since the start of the trials and now the training camp.
