The injured duo from the national team was part of the Tej team owned by Panchakanya Group. Prithu had aggravated his knee injury after a collision with Sharad Vesawkar during their match ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifiers match against Uganda in New Zealand early this year.

Jitendra has a hip injury and according to the team management, it will take him more than one month to recover. Shiekh is currently the member of the national team participating in the ACC Premier League beginning from Thursday in Malaysia. Karan is touted as the future of Nepali fast bowling department.

Among the 30 players picked up from the open trial were Lal Bahadur Adhikari, Raju Gurung, Aayush Dhakhwa, Anil Adhikari, Kshitiz Singh, Bibek Sharma, Pawan Sarraf, Chandan Jha, Shankar Rana, Raj Mohammad, Kushal Bhurtel, Suraj Prasad Kurmi, Sumit Shrestha and Bikram Basnet, Bhupendra Thapa Chhetri.

The Open Trial – which went for over five days – was participated in by 1,500 players from across the country with 62 selected for the second round of selection. Other players picked up for the NPL include Arjun Adhikari, Aashu Kandoi, Suman Shrestha, Aakash Gupta, Sanjay Shrestha, Dipendra Kumar Shah, Sonu Tamang, Dipendra Yadav, Gaurav Singh, Arjun Chapagain, Shiva Sharma, Vishnu Pandey, Arsalan Akhtar and Ravi Bhatta.

Five players each will be picked up the six franchises for NPL making a pool of 18 cricketers in every team. The NPL is scheduled to begin from May 10 with two-day cricket in Dhangadi followed by 50-over in Biratnagar and Twenty20 in Kathmandu.