LAHORE: The hockey chapter of the Prime Minister Talent Hunt Youth Sports League programme got off to a controversial start here at the National Hockey Stadium on Saturday.

The controversy occur­red over the selection of the Higher Education Comm­ission (HEC) and Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) teams between their officials and the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) representatives.

According to the programme’s strategy, 10 teams each of men and women were formed from all four provinces and HEC. The players were selected by former Olymp­ians Shakeel Abbasi and Nasir Ali — both appointed by the PHF.

But on Saturday, when the teams met to play the opening day matches, officials from HEC and KP claimed they have picked up their own teams and that they did not accept the selections by Shakeel and Nasir.

However, at the end, the programme’s director Rai Usman turned down HEC and KP’s protest and allowed the teams selected by the PHF panel to play.

Shakeel claimed the HEC had allowed him to select the teams and that the department also paid him daily allowances. He expressed surprise at the HEC’s disapproval of the team selected by him.

The former Pakistan international added that there was no confusion in the selection of the Sindh, Balcohsitan and Punjab teams and that only KP and the HEC had raised an issue.

An HEC official said that on several occasions the department had written letters to the PHF that it only needed the technical services of the federation including umpies and jury members but not not selectors.

He said the HEC had fixed Rs 80,000 for eight umpires and jury members per day but added that now the PHF had engaged more than eight persons including the selectors in the list.

Published in Dawn, Aug 6th, 2023