17-year-old Mohlai's Amaan selected for FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 18

The 17-year-old Mohali cager Amaan Sandhu is the youngest member of the senior men’s squad to participate in the 2021 FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers.

The Basketball Federation of India has selected a 12-member squad to participate in the qualifiers today. Besides Amaan, Punjab’s Princepal Singh, Jagdeep Singh and Amrit Singh have also been selected in the squad.

The team will play its first of two games in the Window-I of the qualifiers on February 21 against Bahrain at the Manama, Khalifa Sport City. A couple of days after that, the team will travel to Baghdad to face-off against Iraq at the Al Shaeb Hall. India is placed in group D alongside Iraq, Bahrain, and Lebanon. As per the latest FIBA men’s rankings, India (74) is the second-best team in the group while Lebanon, Iraq, and Bahrain are ranked 55th, 79th, and 113th, respectively.

While key veteran players like Satnam Singh and Amjyot Singh, who are banned for three years, missing, the 19-year-old NBA Global Academy student-athlete Princepal is part of this roster. Princepal, who recently led Punjab to gold in the U-21 category in the 2020 Khelo India Youth Games, has been at the NBA Global Academy in Canberra, Australia, for over a year. Sandhu, a student-athlete at the NBA Academy India, was also part of the gold-medal-winning Punjab squad. He was one of three Indians to get selected into the Basketball Without Border Global Camp, at the 2020 All-Star Weekend in Chicago.

India’s squad:

Muin Bek Hafeez (Tamil Nadu), Joginder Singh (Services), Vishesh Bhriguvanshi (ONGC), Prasanna Venkatesh Sivakumar (Tamil Nadu), Sahil (Indian Railways), Jagdeep Singh (Punjab), Prashant Singh Rawat (Uttarakhand), Aravind Annadurai (Tamil Nadu), Princepal Singh (Punjab), Amritpal Singh (Punjab), Amaan Sandhu (Punjab), Arvind Arumugam (Karnataka).