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KARACHI The Scrutiny Committee set up by the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) to look into complaints about overage players in the 1st MCB Junior Hockey Super League had by Thursday disqualified as many as 56 players from different teams featuring in the tournament.
The latest casualties were two players from the Abbottabad squad in the first match played on Thursday.
'I noticed them during the match and went downstairs to have them pulled out,' said the Convener of the Scrutiny Committee, Olympian Hasan Sardar, who also happens to be PHF's chief selector.
The rest of the Committee comprises Barrister Shahida Jamil, Syed M. Zahir Shah, Khawaja Junaid and M. Usman.
Meanwhile, there have been many complaints from the team officials and the players themselves that the disqualified boys were in fact under-18 years of age and therefore quite eligible to play in the tournament.
Hasan, when asked if the Scrutiny Committee was really catching overage players or just making an example of innocent players, said 'Well, these boys, many of whom were caught by the Nadra officials on the first day, were really overage. The rest, whose papers were in order but were obviously older than the required age, were caught by the Scrutiny Committee.'
'But no, we never intended to make an example of the situation. Still, after this tournament the message will be heard loud and clear by all the regional associations who fielded overage boys despite our warnings. The scrutiny was to be carried out initially in the regions alone,' he added.
Earlier, the PHF had resorted to taking the National Database and Registration Authority's (Nadra) help in verifying the boys' ages.
Nadra officials, who had arrived on the morning of the inaugural day, photographed and fingerprinted each boy to check if there was any record of anyone's identity card in their databases.
When asked to comment on allegations aimed at some of the Committee members like Zahir Shah letting older boys play in the Peshawar team because he himself hails from the region, the former centre-forward laughed off the matter, saying that they had disqualified a record nine boys from Peshawar alone.
'Nadra caught six overage boys in the Peshawar squad on the first day and we caught another three, which has the team itself running short of players now. Still, this being a PHF tournament, allowed us to lend them some boys from our academies and other extra members from the other under-18 teams in order to stay in the event,' Hasan explained.
