Gyanendra Malla, who was the vice-captain of U-15 national team that won the U-15 Asia Cup in UAE, has been named captain of the U-17 national side scheduled to participate in the U-17 Asia Cup in August in Malaysia.
A release by Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) said other members of the squad are Deepen Shrestha, Govinda Karki, Nirjal Chhetri, Iraj Shrestha, Sujin Adhikari, Sunam Gautam, Sushant Thapa, Rajan Khadgi, Abinash Bikram Shah, Bijay Bhattarai, Bikrant Singh, Nirmal Simangaida and Prakash Shrestha. The pool of four reserve players has Kailash Chand, Ishan Baniya, Anish Agrawal and Dipankar Thapa.
Gyanendra and Deepen are the only two players from the U-15 Asia Cup winning team making into the U-17 squad.
Nepal is placed in Group C with Afghanistan and Brunei in the August 5-13 event. Nepal will play the first match against Afghanistan on Aug 5 before taking on Brunei the next day. Top two teams from each group qualfy for the quarterfinal and only the top eight will be able to play the U-17 Asia Cup next year with the other teams playing second tier tournament.
Roy Luke Dias will be the coach of the team while Pradeep Pandey will assist him. Kiran Rana has been named manager.