Armed Police Force (APF) has formed a cricket team with national cricketers to compete in domestic cricket tournaments.
Those who joined the job at APF are national captain Paras Khadka, former national captain Paresh Lohani, Raju Basnet, Rom Shrestha, Sanjay Kumar Shrestha, Dipendra Chaudhari, Gyanendra Malla, Sharad Vesawkar, Subas Khakurel, Sunam Gautam, Prithu Baskota, Amrit Bhattarai, Ritesh Singh, Basanta Regmi, Sanjam Regmi, Shakti Gauchan and Mehboob Alam.
Among the 16 players, eight were in the national team that played the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League Division-4 in Italy last month. Chaudhari were left out of the tournament while Paresh pulled out of it. Pritu, Subash, Rom and Sunam have represented Nepal in various age-group tournaments at the international level.
This is the first time that any departmental club has formed a full-fledged cricket team. Nepal Police Club had also signed Binod Das, Manjeet Shrestha, Manoj Katuwal and Kanishka Chaugain some years ago, but they did not form a complete cricket team.
“The chief of our force (IGP Sanat Kumar Basnet) took initiative in forming a cricket team and SSP Durga Kunwar managed everything for it,” said DSP Prem Shrestha.
According to Shrestha, Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) welcomed the decision of APF and has vowed to give technical assistance in preparing pitch at the APF headquarters, Halchowk. “We are planning for a formal launching of the APF cricket team before Dashain, if we finish preparing the pitch by then,” said Shrestha.
All the players have joined APF signing contracts. However, DSP Shrestha said that the players who meet the criteria are also eager for in-service duty.
“We want to help in the institutional development of cricket in Nepal,” said SSP Kunwar, who had also played regional tournaments of cricket representing Morang district in the past.
“We´ll participate in the upcoming domestic leagues organized by CAN. CAN has welcomed our initiative and vowed to help us technically,” he added.
According to Kunwar, APF will form a team combining the national cricketers and the interested army personnel from within the force. “We have issued circulation to our departments and bodies, and found around 56 officers and rank-and-file who had played regional and national tournaments in the past. We will pick some of them and form a good cricket team,” said Kunwar.
SSP Kunwar explained that APF as a new force are always pursuing new thoughts and they chose cricket as their new game. “Cricket is officially among the oldest games in the country, but it has gained popularity and status recently. So, APF got interested in cricket,” explained Kunwar.