The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Tuesday announced a national junior selection committee whose immediate task will be to select the Pakistan under-19 team for next month's ICC under-19 Cricket World Cup to be held in Bangladesh.
Former test spinner Iqbal Qasim has been appointed convener of the committee while other members are Abdul Raqib, Azhar Khan and Maazullah Khan.
The selection committee will hold a preliminary meeting on Thursday and will then supervise trials of the 27 probable, selected on their performances in the recently concluded junior competitions.
All the participating teams were advised by the ICC to submit their 14-players squad by January 15, 2004. However, the PCB on Tuesday requested the ICC to extend its deadline till January 18, 2004 arguing that a new junior selection committee had just been constituted and would require time to chalk out its strategy and hold trials.
The PCB on December 15, 2003 had submitted a provisional squad of 28 players to the ICC. After wrist tests that were conducted on Saturday for age verification at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital one boy was found to be over 19 years of age and was thus disqualified from Friday's trials.
The selected players will continue to attend the training camp at the National Cricket Academy in Lahore.
The camp will break on January 31 for Eid-ul-Azha and will resume in Karachi on February 05. The team will depart for Dhaka on February 08.