SWABI: He may have tied the knot but Junaid Khan isn’t too keen on spending too much time with his wife and is instead focusing on regaining his fitness while clinging on to hope to representing Pakistan at the World Cup.

The left-arm pacer, who was left out of Pakistan’s World Cup squad due to a hamstring injury, married 18-year-old British-Pakistani Khansa Khan in a traditional Pukhtun ceremony in his village of Mathra on Monday.

And speaking to reporters at his residence, he said he was “70 per cent fit” and would join the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Lahore on Thursday to show “improved fitness levels” so he might be flown to Australia and New Zealand to join Pakistan’s injury-hit World Cup squad.

“Ten days ago, my fitness report showed my levels at 50 per cent but I’m 70 per cent fit now and if I show 90 per cent fitness levels at the NCA, I might go to the World Cup,” he said.

Junaid has been replaced by another paceman Rahat Ali, who is expected to join the team in Sydney on Wednesday. The 25-year-old did not explain how the entire process would work out but he made it clear that despite his marriage he would focus on his fitness and cricket.

“We [him and his wife] are still optimistic I would be part of the World Cup squad and I need prayers and good wishes from the nation,” he said. “There is a ray of hope to which I’m clinging onto. It was my utmost desires to play at the World Cup but I could not clear the fitness test.”

He hoped that the Pakistan team would perform well at cricket’s showpiece tournament. “I hope they meet the expectations and wishes of the nation,” Junaid said before adding the team’s World Cup opener against India on Feb 15 would be a “battle of nerves”.

Junaid and Khansa got engaged last June in England and the Pakistan paceman said he was very happy at his marriage. “I am really very happy at getting married,” he said. “It is one of the happiest occasions of my life.”

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2015

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