February 01, 2008	Friday	Muharram 22, 1429

KARACHI, Jan 31: The National Hockey Championship regional qualifying round technical officials openly flouted rules on Thursday when they posted two Karachi umpires in the final between Karachi Whites and Larkana.

In a blatant violation of rules, the tournament director posted umpires Moin Ahmad and Faisal Ismail who supervised the all-important game which saw utter chaos and ugly scenes as Larkana protested in an aggressive behaviour.

According to normal procedure, an umpire from the same city cannot supervise a match in which a team from that particular city is playing. Interestingly, Faisal was not even among the eight umpires appointed by Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) originally.

The two umpires were posted for the crucial match despite the fact that seven neutral umpires were available. The sources said tournament director Jawaid Iqbal, was adamant on posting the pair for the final as he was either oblivious of the rules or hell-bent on obliging and favouring the local outfit.

“It was a clear-cut violation of rules and no umpire from Karachi should have been posted for the match in which a Karachi team was playing. Things are very clear in this regard,” an international umpire told Dawn.

“For instance if Pakistan and India are playing then no umpire from these countries could supervise the match.”

To make matters worse, the tournament director posted Faisal who is a relative of Karachi Whites manager Qadeer Ahmad which put credibility of his decisions in doubt.

PHF associate secretary Ramzan Jamali, who also belongs to Larkana, launched a scathing attack on the tournament director.

“It was his incompetence that he posted both the umpires from Karachi,” he said, adding that he would take up the matter at federation level.

Jamali also denied that he was Larkana team manager, saying “organisers deliberately mentioned my name on the sheet as manager while Mahmood Mangi is actually the manager. But today Mangi was the coach and Muzaffar Qaimkhani acted as manager.”

Interestingly, in the Larkana-Quetta semi-final, instead of Asif Michael, Zahid Ali was erroneously mentioned as the Larkana scorer in the official scoresheet.

Among other notable violations, the Karachi Whites players were seen wearing white sneakers instead of dark colour shoes and wore shirts with illegible numbers.

Karachi Whites also had no less than 14 persons on their bench during the match while usually maximum number allowed is nine.—Sports Reporter