KARACHI: Trials to select two Pakistan junior teams for the South Asian Cadets & Juniors Championship and a training tour to China begins at Peshawar from April 18, the Pakistan Table Tennis Federation (PTTF) said on Thursday.

“We’ve decided to conduct open trials as the national junior table tennis championship has been deferred and takes place in the last week of July at Abbottabad,” the PTTF President S. M. Sibtain told Dawn after presiding over the executive committee and executive board meetings that took place at an Islamabad hotel. The two events are slated to take place in June.

Elaborating on the Chinese tour, he said China has invited one junior team comprising five players from one of the five regions under Asian Table Tennis Union (ATTU) development programme. “This time China has extended invitation to Pakistan from South Asian region,” he added. He said that the programme envisaged one week coaching under the guidance of experts and participation in an ITTF junior circuit that immediately followed.

The meeting allotted third Masters Cup to Balochistan and takes place in June while Punjab and Islamabad will play host to the fourth and fifth in Aug and Sept this year. He said the PTTF will start preparing data base of players and officials from district to national level as well as the departments very soon which is aimed at removing disorder.

Admitting that the procedure of co-opting members in the nine standing committees was not proper, he said a form will be circulated inviting committee-wise nominations with a brief profile of candidates in the next annual general meeting. The nominations will be forwarded to nomination committee that will make final recommendations.

Besides Sibtain, the meeting was attended by Kifayatullah (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Khawaja Hasan Wadood (Punjab), Saleem Ahmed (Sindh), Nadeem Mansoor (Islamabad), Hasan Iqbal Gardezi (Islamabad), Shahid Akhtar Baloch (Bahawalpur) and Khalid Mahmood Chaudhry (Faisalabad).

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2015

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