Future of Pakistan in T20 cricket is bright: Intikhab

LAHORE: Pakistan team manager Intikhab Alam is optimistic about the national team's future in the Twenty20 cricket as he feels there is a flood of talent in the country.Intikhab, who is supervising the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) fast track camp in Lahore, said there were chances that the youngsters could be short listed to prepare a specialist T20 squad for next year's World Cup in Sri Lanka in September.Pakistan, the losing finalists of the inaugural T20 World Championship in 2007 and the winners in 2009 in England, recently held its first super eights T20 competition in Faisalabad, which saw a number of youngsters making an impact in the absence of leading stars like Shahid Afridi, Abdul Razzaq, Umar Gul and others.The former Test captain said that thenational selectors were pretty impressed with the young talent in T20cricket."The selectors have already started working on a plan tofinalise a pool of players who would eventually form a T20 squad. The future islooking bright," Intikhab said."The feeling is that T20 cricket is ayoung man's game and requires a different approach and the youngsters we haveseen in the national championship and the camp are pretty good," headded.Intikhab also said with T20 cricket getting more and morepopular and other cricket boards also giving importance to the shortest versionof the game, it was a good time for Pakistan to start makingpreparations."We have some young players who are big hitters and wehave seen bowlers equipped to even defend small totals in T20 cricket," henoted.Chief selector, Mohsin Khan who is also in the camp, assisting the batsmen, said he was also impressed with the young talent."Butwe will soon sit down and decide what to do. We have seen the talent and we haveto now shortlist players for T20 cricket," he said.The second phaseof the fast track camp will feature spinners and middle-order batsmen and Mohsinsaid that would also be an important camp."Some of the youngsterswho featured in the first phase seem to be good and eager to shine at theinternational level. But obviously time is required to properly assess theirworth. However, we are feeling good about the talent we have in T20 cricket,"Mohsin said.Former Test players -- Sarfraz Nawaz, Ijaz Ahmed and Abdul Qadir -- are also working in the camp with the youngsters and discarded players.The programme is being run by Intikhab, who is also PCB'sdirector of game development.