September 06, 2007	Thursday	Sha'aban 23, 1428

KARACHI, Sept 5: BVS Parsi High School, who “walked-out” of the ongoing Munawwaruz Zaman Inter-school Memorial Hockey Tournament in protest on Tuesday, have alleged that the organisers blatantly flouted rules, allowing over-age players to play against them.

“This is to bring to your notice the fiasco at our match against Govt Agro-Technical High School on Tuesday. As per the rules set in the meeting on Aug 18, chaired by organising secretary, Mr Qadeer Ahmad, it was decided that those players who have passed HSC part II are not eligible to play. Mr Muzaffar Khan Rana, one of the technical officials, endorsed this.

“When our school reached the venue, the boys representing Agro-Technical School were older and over-age. Mr Rana misbehaved and compelled our physical instructor to stage a walk-out.

“Winning or losing is part of the game, but this kind of blatant flouting of rules is not in the spirit of sportsmanship that we want to inculcate in our students. We request you to look into this matter,” BVS School principal Mrs Kermin Parakh wrote to the chairman of organising committee Islahuddin Siddiqui on Wednesday.

Interestingly, organisers have made Islah the chairman of the committee, although the Olympian happens to be busy managing the Pakistan team at the ongoing Asia Cup in Chennai.

The principal of the school also complained to the sponsors of the tournament, but the organising secretary Qadeer alleged that the BVS team officials didn’t lodge an official protest with the technical officials of the match.

“I told them (BVS team officials), it was not their job to conduct age scrutiny of the players. Their job was to play. They didn’t listen to us and walked out of the competition. I have no instrument to check age of the players. I believe the players from Agro-Technical School were not over-aged. The BVS officials should have played the match under protest by submitting an official protest to technical officials,” Qadeer contended.