March 6, 2002	Wednesday	Zilhaj 21, 1422

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KUALA LUMPUR, March 5: Pakistan, angered by what they termed was ‘biased umpiring’ in Tuesday’s crucial World Cup match against Germany lodged an official protest that was declared void by Tournament Director, Wiert Doijer.

A fuming Khalid Sajjad Khokhar, the team manager, told journalists that umpires had cruelly robbed Pakistan of victory that he felt was theirs. “It is because of them that we lost today, it was terribly bad umpiring.”

But the Tournament Director said that the manager had failed to declare his intention to lodge a protest when he signed the match report, which is compulsory under rule 14.1 of tournament regulations. “There has also been no verbal declaration and the protest therefore cannot be taken into consideration.”

“They did everything against us and crossed all limits,” Khalid said of New Zealander Jason McCracken and South African Clive McMurray, the two umpires who officiated the match. “They disrupted all the moves our players initiated, and it appeared as if they were playing the game.”

Khalid also questioned McCracken’s decision to temporarily send off defender Tariq Imran in the second half with the scores tied 2-2 that allowed Germany to get their match-winner. “When my boy touched someone, he was shown a yellow while the Germans went about kicking us nothing happened.”

He questioned why couldn’t an Asian umpire be posted for their match while pointing out that Saturday’s game against Holland that Pakistan lost had both European umpires. Ireland’s Raymond O’Connor and Denmark’s Henrik Ehlers supervised that game.

“In that match, we had a penalty stroke awarded against us which was never there,” he said of the incident. Pakistan, were 0-1 behind when Ehlers gave the Dutch defending champions a stroke at the start of the second half from which the green shirts never recovered.

Khalid asked for some kind of a balance in umpires’ postings for such matches by appointing one Asian and a European.

Coach Khawaja Junaid meanwhile told Dawn that almost everything in the tournament went against them. “We had to play three matches on the bumpy Pitch No. 2, we were victims of bad umpiring in the Holland game and we were made to play today’s important match (against Germany) early in the morning.”

Meanwhile German team manager Bernd Schopf said Tuesday he did not think that umpiring in the game against Pakistan which they won 3-2 to advance to the semifinals of the World Cup, was bad.

“Players make mistakes, the umpires make mistakes and they are only humans,” he told a post-match new conference. “Some umpires are excellent while others are of a lower level,” he said and added that he did not want to speak too much about umpiring.