ISLAMABAD, Feb 14: Thirty-five junior players have reported to the training camp at Naseer Bunda Hockey Ground for the training camp organised by the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) as a build-up to prepare a strong team for the forthcoming Junior World Cup scheduled to be held in Singapore and Malayasia in June.

Hoping to recover their lost glory in international hockey, the greenshirts will vie for the title while competing among the 16 nations.

PHF will announce the final 18-member squad on Feb 18.

The players will discover the true meaning of the expression ‘snatch back the glory’ while preparing under tough coaching of Wouter Tazelar, Olympian Khawaja Junaid, Danish Kaleem and goal keeping coach Ahmed Alam.

Olympian Khawaja Junaid, chief coach of the junior team, told Dawn on Saturday: “We have especially come to Islamabad to prepare a squad which will learn the technique to be defensive.

It’s our aim to elevate the standard of the team to be at par with other international competitive sides so we will be featuring in a four-nation tournament in Malaysia and a five-nation tournament in Egypt in March in preparation of the World Cup”.

Pakistan is placed in pool A along with the defending junior World Champions Argentina, Russia, Belgium and Egypt.

Pakistan will play its first match against Russia on June 7 in Malaysia.

Probables:

Goal-Keepers: Imran Shah, Imran Butt, Waqas Ahmad, Khurram Majeed.

Full-backs: Kashif Ali, Mohammad Atiq , Imran Abbas , Nawaz , Majid Khan , Khalid Bhatti , Wasif Siddique , Mohammad Irfan , Zaheer Ahmad , Amir Shahzad , Fareed Ahmad , Rashid , Usman Tariq , Mohsin Bilal , Kashif Idrees , Aqeel Bhatti.

Forwards: Shafqat Rasool , Mohammad Zubair , Inayat Ullah , Haseem Khan, Mohammad Taufeeq, Mohammad Yasir, Nasir Shahzad, Rizwan, Khurram Shahzad, Shahbaz, Omer Bhutta, Rana Omer, Hassan Akhtar, Azlan Khan , Adeel Hussain .