ISLAMABAD, March 26: The Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) continues to victimise players and officials and their latest target this time has been senior white badge umpire Arif Qureshi.
Arif, the only umpire in the country to have officiated 50 Davis Cup matches, has been ignored for next month’s Asia Oceania Group II tie against Taiwan which Pakistan is to host in Lahore.
The PTF in a decision that is clearly not understandable has appointed two chair umpires for the tie, both of whom will be making their Davis Cup debut.
Shahzad Akhtar Alvi, office secretary of the PTF and his younger brother Asif Shahzad Alvi, have been assigned the job instead of Arif Qureshi. Shahzad’s appointment especially is open to question as being an employee of the PTF, it could draw objection from the International Tennis Federation.
Both Shahzad and Asif were line umpires when Pakistan hosted Thailand for a Davis Cup tie in 1997 at Lahore.
It is surprising that although the PTF as the host nation could have named more chair umpires for the tie, it has chosen to look the other way.
Apart from Qureshi, there are three white badge umpires in Pakistan and all of whom are his students.
Besides the Davis Cup matches, Qureshi has also officiated at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, the Madras SAF Games and a number of internationals in Uzbekistan, England, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and India.
Meanwhile, only last week Pakistan tennis found itself gripped in another controversy, when top-ranked player Asim Shafik quit the Davis Cup camp in Lahore apparently because of a row with camp commandant Bashir Gill and coach Rashid Malik.
The PTF has so far not made any attempt to persuade Asim to return to the camp, which reflects well a lack of seriousness of the officials running the affairs.
President of PTF, Anwar Saifullah Khan was not available to comment on both the developments.
Meanwhile, the much delayed elections of the PTF are now to be held on April 15 in Islamabad.
At least three candidates are said to be in the run for the post of president while four candidates are eying the secretary’s job.
Governor Punjab, Lt. Gen (Retd) Khalid Maqbool, former minister Ijazul Haq and president of Islamabad Tennis Association (ITA) Dilawar Abbas will reportedly be running for president.
Munir Pirzada, who has previously been the secretary of the PTF twice, former Davis Cup players Aman Asghar, Zulfikar Rahim and Jameel Ahmed and secretary ITA, Altaf Hussain Kazmi are likely to contest for the post of secretary.
The elections were originally to be held last September but were delayed because of the new sports policy.
But the Punjab Tennis Association (PTA) in a blatant violation of the sports policy that bars officials from holding office for more than two terms of four years each, has elected Bashir Gill as the secretary yet again, who has already served for more than 10 years.
It will now be interesting to see that on the one hand PTF chief Anwar Saifullah Khan delayed the elections so that these could be held as per the sports policy, on the other hand what action he would take against Punjab, for having violating the policy.