March 24, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 4, 1428

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

KARACHI, March 23: Pakistan junior hockey team, which failed to board the flight on Thursday night, finally left for Nairobi via Dubai on Friday to play series in Kenya and Egypt.

The team, along with its manager Jahangir Butt and coaches, Kamran Ashraf and Danish Kaleem, reached Karachi airport on Thursday evening to board Dubai flight which was scheduled to depart for the UAE state from where they were scheduled to get a connection for Nairobi.

Although there was no responsible Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) official available to give an official version, there are reports that the squad reached the airport late and was not allowed to board the flight.

There are also reports that boarding was not allowed since few members of the squad didn’t have confirmed tickets.

There were two PIA flights on Thursday evening to Dubai – PK 213 and 227. Both were delayed but were not cancelled as 213 departed at around 2.30am instead of 10.00pm, while 227 left for Dubai at 9.50pm after a near two-hour delay.

The mishap at the airport seems to be mismanagement on the part of junior team manager and the PHF officials, especially those who are based in Karachi’s PHF camp office at Hockey Club of Pakistan.

However, no official version from PHF was available since the organization is working without secretary as Akhtarul Islam has resigned as its secretary on Wednesday, saying he doesn’t want to continue as a “rubber-stamp and a dummy official” under president PHF Zafarullah Jamali who is running the affairs single-handedly.

Jamali was also not available for comments.