Pakistan News & Features Services
The 16th National Seniors Cricket Cup 2014, being organized by the Pakistan Veterans Cricket Association (PVCA), will be getting underway with the inaugural match of the Southern Zone between Karachi Gold Bridge and Karachi Friends at the National Stadium, Karachi, on March 30.
The details of the seven-week event, being sponsored by Arif Habib Corporation Limited and Omar Associates (Pvt) Limited, were unveiled by Fawad Ijaz Khan, Chairman, PVCA, and Aashiq Hussain Qureshi, CEO, PVCA, in a media briefing at the Karachi Gymkhana on March 27.
Nadeem Omar, Managing Director, Omar Associates (Pvt) Limited, and Mohammad Ejaz CEO Arif Habib REIT, were also present on the occasion.
The total prize money in the tournament will be Rs 805,000 with the winners of the national final to receive a purse of Rs 150,000 and the runners-up to collect Rs 75,000.
It was disclosed that a total of 108 teams from 58 cities will be participating in the tournament and they have been divided in 24 Groups. As many as 35 city teams from Punjab, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, eight from Sindh, three from Islamabad and one from FATA have entered the competition whose national final will be played between the winning teams of North and South zones at Lahore on May 4.
The group matches for the Southern Zone will be of 25 overs each innings whereas the zonal and national finals will be of 30 overs per innings. The group matches will be organized on single league basis.
The matches of Northern Zone will be played at Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Bahawalpur, Multan, Okara, Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Muridke, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Sialkot while the matches of Southern Zone will be played at Karachi, Hyderabad, Dadu, Shikarpur and Badin.
Alamgir Ahmed has been designated as the Coordinator for the Southern Zone whose organizing committee will comprise of Amjad Islam Rishi, Mir HyderAli Talpur, Abdul Hussain Shah, Visal Ansari, Hasnain Bokhari and Ateeq Shaikh.
The PVCA, it may be recalled, was established in 1998 at Karachi, having been registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) since 2001 as the sole representative cricket organization for seniors/veterans cricket in the country.
The PVCA has attained not only national but international recognition as well. It has played three series of one-dayers against Indian Veterans with some of the legendary cricketers having played in those games. Besides organizing seniors/veterans/super veterans cricket, the PVCA is also actively promoting school cricket.
The flagship event of the PVCA at national level has been the National Seniors Cup, now in its 16th year, having been played annually amongst selected teams of various cities. The PVCA has been organizing the National Seniors Tournament every year since 1998.
As far as the playing conditions for the tournament are concerned, players who are 40 years or above on the day of the match are eligible to participate and the age of players will be certified through CNIC. Only those players who have stopped playing first class cricket since last year are eligible to participate in the tournament.
