Saudi squad leaves for Oman for T20I qualifiers

By Syed Mussarat Khalil

Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — The Saudi Cricket Center (SCC) selected Saudi cricket squad left for Oman on Thursday to participate in the Western Region Men's T20 tournament Oman 2020, starting from Feb 21- 28.

Two Saudi support staff will be in the team as manager and coach. They are Osama Saad Al-Nadwi and Abbas Saad Al-Nadwi respectively.

All matches in the tournament will be played with official T20I status and ranking points will be counted towards ICC Men’s T20I team rankings.

Oman will host teams from United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Maldives, Saudi Arabia and Iran, from which the two finalists will qualify for the Asia Cup qualifiers. They will join the top two teams from the Eastern Region T20, to be hosted by Thailand in the qualifiers.

Oman, Qatar, Maldives and Bahrain are placed in one group, while the other group consists of United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. All countries will play each other in a single round-robin group stage format, before the top two teams advance to the semifinal stage of the tournament.

The team: Shoaib Ali (captain); Adil Butt; Ibrar ur Haq; Abdul Wahid; Abdul Waheed Abdul Ghaffar; Faisal Khan; Zeeshan Sarfraz Butt; Shamsudheen Englam Purat; Imran Yousuf; Sajid Imran Cheema (vice captain); Syed Ali Abbas; Usman Ali; Khawar Zafar and Malik Muhammad Naeem.