July 11, 2003	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 10, 1424

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KARACHI, July 10: Blatant violation of rules by Pakistan Juniors created confusion during the first game in Pakistan-China friendship hockey series on Thursday.

The game was nothing but farce with the sport itself and a torture for the journalists covering the series as hosts could be seen openly violating the rules of the game.

While the Chinese were neatly dressed in red and white kits, Pakistan Juniors had dark blue shirt numbers on their dark green shirts, making them almost illegible.

Not only the shirt numbers were unclear, but many Pakistan junior players were wearing different numbers on their shirts and shorts — a clear violation of rules.

Quite a few Pakistan players had different shirt numbers as they were not matching with the numbers mentioned in the line-ups provided to the reporters.

The careless attitude of the jury and the team officials caused chaos as it was hard to determine who scored the goal.

Pakistan Juniors’ Mohammad Arif wore shirt number one while goalkeeper Shakir Munir too had the same number on his shirt.

However, Arif had been mentioned as number 7 in the sheet, while Mohammad Khalid had shirt number 14, although he was shown wearing number 15 in the official line-up.

Officials even did not bother to provide the full names of the Pakistan Juniors as there were at least ten players whose full names were not written in the official sheet.