Sialkot depart for India

Pakistan's national champions Sialkot have left for India to play Uttar Pradesh, India's Ranji Trophy winners, in a four-day match from September 27 to 30 at Dharamsala.

Sialkot were the winners of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy and were scheduled to play Uttar Pradesh on September 12 but that game was postponed because of time constraints. "The match is final and the Sialkot team has left today for Dharamsala where the match is being held," Subhan Ahmed, a PCB official, told Reuters. "We wanted this match to be held on time so that we can work on other bilateral proposals."

The Sialkot team includes Test players such as Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Asif and Imran Nazir while Uttar Pradesh have Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina and RP Singh from the Indian squad. The boards of the two countries hope that this game will pave the way for more bilateral domestic matches.

Uttar Pradesh - Mohammad Kaif (capt), Suresh Raina, Rudra Pratap Singh, Piyush Chawla, Jyoti Yadav, Avinash Yadav, Shivakant Shukla, Praveen Kumar, Mohammad Amir Khan (wk), Gyanendra Pandey, Rizwan Shamshad, Ashish Winston Zaidi, Shalabh Srivastava, Rohit Prakash, Ravikant Shukla
Coach Rajinder Singh Hans, Manager - Gopal Sharma

Sialkot - Shoaib Malik (capt), Imran Nazir, Majid Jehangir, Mohammad Asif, Atiq-ur-Rehman, Khalid Mahmood, Abdur Rehman, Mansoor Amjad, Shahid Yousuf, Sarfraz Ahmed, Tahir Mughal, Shehzad Malik, Inam-ul-haq
Coach - Abdul Quadeer Chaud, Manager - Azmat Rana