Announcement of preliminary World Cup, New Zealand series squads deferred

Question marks over several key players forced Pakistani selectors Friday to defer the announcement of a preliminary squad for the forthcoming World Cup and a team for the six-match One-day series against New Zealand.
The World Cup will be jointly hosted by India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka from February 19 to April 2. Except for Pakistan, all other 13 countries have announced a preliminary squad.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) have extended the deadline of announcing the preliminary squad from December 19 to January 5 only for Pakistan as they needed to seek clearance of some players who are under suspicion of match-fixing.
The national selection committee had a marathon meeting here on Friday at Gadaffi Stadium and deliberated upon the names of players but deferred the final selection till next week. Mohsin Hasan Khan presided over the meeting which was attended by members, Mohammad Ilyas (Member), Azhar Khan and Asif Baloch, Farukh Zaman (both co-opt members) attended the meeting.
"The announcement of both the squads has been deferred till early next week. It is pertinent to mention here that PCB has to submit the names of 30 players to ICC for the World Cup by January 5, 2011," said Mohsin Khan after the meeting here on Friday.
"We had lengthy discussions on performance and availability of many players. We were of the opinion that since we still have a few days before the deadline for announcing the World Cup squad it would be better to wait until there is absolute clarity from PCB on the availability for selection of certain players," he added.
Shoaib Malik, Kamran Akmal and Danish Kaneria were not selected for the recent series against South Africa and for the current tour of New Zealand after they were alleged of involvement in match-fixing. The three players appeared before a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) integrity committee on Thursday for interrogation over the allegations. The committee was formed following a directive from the ICC.
Three other key players - Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer - were suspended by the ICC in September on spot-fixing charges during Pakistan's Lord's Test against England a month earlier. The trio are to appear before an ICC anti-corruption tribunal in Doha from January 6-11. Pakistan are currently touring New Zealand, where they lost the Twenty20 series 2-1 on Thursday. The teams will next play two Test matches in January, followed by six one-day internationals.