J&K Cricket Association (JKCA) on Friday announced its T20 team for the upcoming Mushtaq Ali T20 trophy tournament. The open selection trials for the team were held at GGM Science College ground Jammu. The team was selected by six member selection committee.
The 15-member J&K team will be led by Parvez Rasool and includes Shubham Khajuria, Ahmad Banday, Ian Dev Singh (W), Pranav Gupta, Bandeep Singh, Owais Shah, Shubham Singh Pundir, Waseem Raza, Ram Dayal, Manzoor Dar, Umar Nazir, Muhammad Mudasir, Manic Gupta and Jatin Wadhwan.
J&K will be playing its first match of the event against Services at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium, New Delhi. Last year J&K was able to win three out of five matches in the event and missed qualification into next round by a whisker.
Apart from the known faces team this time also includes Under-23 level players who performed extremely well during recently held Under-23 national level event. While team will mostly revolve around performance of star all-rounder Parvez Rasool in both batting nad balling but there are also players like Manzoor Dar and Umar Nazir.
Last year on the basis of their performance in same format explosive power hitter Manzoor Dar popularly known as Manzoor Pandaw and pacer Umar Nazir were selected for the north zone team. With Indian Premier League (IPL) auctions scheduled to be held after the event it is a golden opportunity for J&K players to impress the IPL managers and owners .
“Team looks well balanced apart from some minor glitches. They did well last year in the event and this time too expectations are high,” said a senior cricketer.
JKCA official said that selectors did their best to select deserving ones keeping in mind the possibilities of T20 format.