LAHORE: With four days to go until the start of the Asian Champions Trophy, seven Pakistanis — two players, three team officials and two tournament officials — are yet to receive visas to travel to Bangladesh.

The tournament begins in Dhaka from Tuesday with Pakistan taking on Japan and the online visas would only be received by Sunday, with the weekly holiday in Bangladesh falling on Friday and Saturday.

Goalkeepers Amjad Ali and Mazhar Abbas as well as goalkeeping coach Ahmed Alam, trainer Abid Amin and physio Mohammad Aslam couldn’t join the rest of the team, which left for Bangladesh from Karachi on Friday.

Amjad and Mazhar were named as replacements to Abdullah and Waqar Ahmed, who were originally announced in the squad before being dropped due to sluggish performances at the recent FIH Junior World Cup in India.

Abdullah and Waqar, however, did receive their visas and are travelling with the squad to Bangladesh in case there is a delay in the issuance of visas for Amjad and Mazhar. Ahmad was also appointed only recently to the team management.

The PHF is still hoping to get the visas by Sunday and is willing to send Amjad and Mazhar at the earliest. In that case both Waqar and Abdullah will remain in Bangladesh as reserves.

More surprisingly, umpire Haroon Rasheed and judge Hasan Akhtar are also awaiting visas. It is the responsibility of the Asian Hockey Federation to ensure the visas of its own officials well on time.

“The PHF is in contact with both the Bangladesh’s authorities and the AHF and hopefully more online visas will be issued from Bangladesh by Sunday,” PHF secretary Asif Bajwa said.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2021