Teenage spin prodigy Nadeem Ahmed has been called up to the 14-strong Hong Kong squad to play at next month's Asia Cup in Sri Lanka. The left-arm spinner is one of five changes made to the team who struggled at the Asian Cricket Council Trophy in Kuala Lumpur.
Apart from Nadeem, the other new faces in the team are left-arm fast bowler Khalid Khan, left-hand batsman Graeme Jardine, all-rounder Roy Lamsam and wicketkeeper-batsman Nasir Hameed. The Hong Kong Cricket Association has also retained former Indian one-day specialist Robin Singh as coach.
Dropped are batsmen Mark Eames and Ravi Sujanani, off-spinner Jawaid Iqbal, and medium-pacers Chris Williams and Imran Farcy. Williams and Farcy were part of the ACC Trophy squad, but did not play a role in Hong Kong's first-round ousting as they were reserves for all the three preliminary matches.
'We have made a number of changes to the team who were obviously not good enough in Malaysia. Hong Kong's performance was very disappointing and we hope that there is an improvement,' said Mike Walsh, chairman of selectors.
'Players like Nadeem and Lamsam would have been picked for the ACC Trophy if not for the fact that they were unavailable due to examinations. These are over and they are now back in the squad.'
Lamsam is at university in Australia, while Nadeem goes to school in Hong Kong.
Singh, 40, will continue as coach despite Hong Kong's poor showing in Kuala Lumpur, where they failed to reach the semi-finals of the ACC Trophy for the first time in five tournaments.
