KARACHI, March 5: Miscreants created havoc with the Twenty20 Cup when play was held up for nearly two hours during the final at the National Stadium late on Saturday.

What should have been an absorbing encounter between Faisalabad Wolves and Sialkot Stallions turned into a free-for-all as the troublemakers among the 30,000 crowd resorted to throwing bottles, pieces of glass and stones at the players.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), which owns the National Stadium, was equally responsible for the chaotic scenes that led to play being suspended several times since no proper security arrangements were made beforehand.

Only a handful of policemen were present at the stadium when the game started at 9.40pm. Even then the majority of them were seen in and around the main building. They simply stood motionless as hundreds of youngsters even dared to walk and run leisurely on rooftops of the general enclosures.

Taking advantage of this lapse on PCB’s part, the troublemakers endangered the lives of players who were fielding around the boundary by hurling objects for unknown reasons.

Among the players at whom the missiles were thrown, Pakistan stars Rana Navedul Hasan and Shoaib Malik both escaped being seriously hurt.

By the time the Rangers were called up by the red-faced PCB officials, the situation had gone out of control and pieces of fixed chairs inside the stands adjacent to the pavilion were flung onto the areas just outside the boundary skirting.

With entry being free, a huge turnout was always on the cards especially at the weekend. A large number among the spectators were families with young children and ladies who probably had never witnessed such ugly scenes.

Outside one saw traffic clogged on the roads while thousands of cricket diehards were denied entry into the stadium.

Some media personnel also faced lot of problems from those manning the gates of the main building and only managed to get in after PCB officials recognized them.

Astonishingly, the tournament organizers, representing a foreign bank, decided against issuing media accreditation cards while claiming that their budget for the US$50,0000 event was exhausted.

The match eventually reached its conclusion at half past two on Sunday morning because the match referee Taslim Arif announced that overs wouldn’t be deducted for the time lost.

“The reason for not curtailing the overs was simple since we didn’t want the public from being deprived of watching a competitive game of cricket.

“Why should the majority suffer just because a few idiots created trouble,” he said after the game.