17-member ‘Pardesi Qalandars’ squad announced

LAHORE: Adding Pakistani expatriates to their clan, Lahore Qalandars has announced a 17-member “Pardesi Qalandars” squad for the players development program.

The squad include players from England, America, South Africa, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Spain.

Lahore Qalandars had earlier invited Pakistani expats from all over the world to be part of this project by sending their videos.

“We received around 25,000 videos from all across the world. We analysed players from the video sent to us and chose 40 for the final trials,” said former Test Cricketer Ali Naqvi who was supervising the jury to finalise Pardesi Qalandars.

CEO Lahore Qalandars Rana Atif said that the idea behind Pardesi Qalandars was to provide equal opportunity to Pakistanis living abroad.

“After conducting trials at different venues, we received requests from overseas Pakistanis as well, so we imitated this program for them,” Rana said.

Players selected for the program said that it’s a good opportunity for them to achieve their dream of playing for Pakistan.

“I have played Under 19 World Cup for Scotland but I want to play for Pakistan. I grew up with this dream. Today, when I came to Stadium for trials, watching stars painted in stadium brought tears in my eyes, it’s a very emotional moment for me,” said Azeem Dar who came from Scotland to appear in the trials.

Another expat, Hassam Mushtaq from UK, said that he has bowled to some of the greatest batsmen of this era at nets in Birmingham.

“I recently bowled to Indian batsmen in nets, I have also bowled to Australian and other teams when they were touring country,” said Hassam who has also played for Oxford University Team.

“This is a great platform for all the players like us who are playing in other countries to come and get a chance to play for own’s country,” Hassam added.

The Pardesi Qalandars squad include Umar Asad from South Africa, Fahad Babar from USA, Danial Chaudhry from UK, Hafiz Farzam Alam from UAE, Antum Naqvi from Australia, Aneeq Hassan from UK, Azeem Dar from Scotland, Inayat Saeed from Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Sultan from USA, Marwan Mohammad from UK, Hassam Mushtaq from UK, Gohar Shah from UK, Junaid Nadir from UK, Imran Javed from Bahrain, Mohammad Bilal from UK, Faisal Hussain from Spain and Meer Murtaza from occupied Kashmir.